Azure Cosmos
by Punitor567
Summary: A chance incident and encounter drags a man back to the life he had so desperately tried to leave behind. Grand Order timeline, post Part 1. (Character tags correspond to the latest chapter)
1. Beginnings

_**Chapter One – Hero of another Story - Beginnings**_

**[January 2****nd****, 2021]**

He stood with his back to a wall that only reached up to his hips. There was nowhere left to run; he was already on the highest floor.

The mad magus almost lazily walked towards him, knowing as well as he did that was no escape route here.

Even with the heavy rainfall he could make out, just barely, the sound of fierce battle below him and far offshore. The Siren he'd seen earlier was fighting against one – or more than one – of the ship girls who had been deployed to the area. Another was on the ground a good distance away, in the process of incapacitating a dozen armed guards. It wasn't exactly going to be difficult for her, despite the men being armed enough to pass as a SWAT team, but neither party was going to make it up here in time.

He was alone with the magus and they both knew it.

"It really amuses me how some people seem to lose the ability to make rational decisions when frightened enough," the magus said, smiling. "They do stupid things like climbing to the top of a lighthouse in a desperate attempt to run. You voluntarily ran headfirst into a dead end while leaving no significant barricades or obstacles behind!" the magus laughed.

He smiled nervously, "Well, what can I say? It seemed like a good idea at the time."

"Whatever the case, you still just ran to your death! Well, I did order everyone at the docks be killed so I can't blame you for wanting to live a few more seconds. Still, those seconds are up, _boy_."

"Okay, first, I'm twenty-four, not a boy," he said. "Second, just shut up and take your best shot."

The magus shrugged, pointing the head of a large staff at him. The top-most gem began to glow with densely packed power.

"Now that I think about it, you're not quite like him," the magus said. "You're both cowards, but he was a lot smarter."

"And how do you know I'm not still planning something?"

The magus narrowed his eyes. The staff-head glowed brighter.

A dense purple laser blasted out.

_***~Several hours ago~***_

An alarm rang. It continued to ring for several seconds. Eventually, the blanket on the bed shifted. A hand clumsily reached for the ringing smartphone. After a few misses, it landed and the owner of the hand tapped the alarm off without looking at the screen thanks to experience. The person lay unmoving in that position for several seconds before yawning and slowly getting up.

He stared at the phone screen for a second. "Man, that was intense drinking last night," he grumbled, rubbing his forehead. "Right, bathroom, bathroom…" he muttered, heading to the small adjoined bathroom of his room.

As he splashed his face with tap water, he glanced at his reflection. He seemed to be unable to grow any facial hair, so his face was smooth. Not that he minded; he was never fond of the concept anyway. His black hair had grown long enough to hide his blue eyes from some angles; he'd gotten lazy, he absently mused, fingering a sloppily-cut strand. Even after all these years he still had issues with letting other people hold sharp objects so close to him, so he preferred to cut it himself.

It took several minutes before he was ready. He decided to grab a bite somewhere before leaving for work. Getting dressed didn't take long; he only had the few sets.

Picking up his phone and pocketing it, he left his room. He didn't bother locking the door. It wasn't like he was leaving behind anything he'd miss.

*~B~*

"You're late!"

"Gimme a break, boss, I still have a hangover…"

The 'boss' was a big burly tanned man. His gruff face was covered in barely-cared-for facial hair, which was black in contrast to the mop of white hair on his head. Yet despite his intimidating appearance, the man was carefree and friendly with just about anyone.

The boss was a good man. He liked having him as a boss.

"Fah! What are you, a lightweight?" the boss scoffed.

_No because Drake made sure I could hold my drink, underage be damned. _"For your information, you guys made me drink an entire bottle's worth on my own. Also, that's not how it works."

"Whatever. Look sharp, lad! We got work to do!"

"Don't we always…" he muttered.

Apparently he hadn't said it that quietly as his boss chuckled. "For a newbie, you sure catch on quick! You'll go far yet, lad!"

"Yeah, yeah. So what do you need?"

"There's a container in warehouse 2 full of crates. I need you to check them and then help load them onto the company truck."

"What are they supposed to be?" he asked, already walking away.

"Says here it's furniture," the boss called back.

"Who the hell is shipping furniture from overseas…" he muttered.

The shipyard where he had found some menial work after Christmas last year wasn't too big. It was a little out of the way of most common sea routes. The dock wasn't large enough for the bigger ships, only having space for smaller cargo ships.

Most of the yard was an open lot, which had become a maze of cargo containers convoluted enough for someone to get lost in. Despite how it looked, the boss assured him he could keep track of what was where. The newbie could too, but compared to regular humans he was basically cheating.

At one corner of the dock was a large, long-armed crane, used to move containers between places in the yard or parked ships. At the opposite end was a tall lighthouse. The top floor, which housed the light itself, had recently had the glass around it broken, so just for today, it was open to the air.

By the lighthouse were several buildings, most of them just the one story. Three large buildings stood out in the midst – those were the three spacious warehouses. Each had a number painted on a wall – 01 to 03 – otherwise they were all identical.

As he walked, someone he didn't recognize came up to him. It was a tall Caucasian, with short-cut reddening brown hair. The name tag on his shirt said Robert Marcus. He looked to be about thirty years old.

"Yo," the newcomer greeted. "You're Tanaka, the new guy?"

It took him a moment to remember that that was the name he was going by. "That's me. Nice to meet you, uh, Mr. Marcus?"

"Eh, just call me Bob," the man shrugged. "Gotta say, you're fluent and have no accent at all. I haven't met anyone like that from the Sakura Empire. Or, whatever it's called nowadays."

"You'd be surprised. Also, no, they never stopped calling it Japan. Sakura Empire is just what they call their ship girl division. This place is still the US, not the Eagle Union."

Bob scoffed. "Some Empire, with just a few dozen citizens."

"Sardegna has even less. Why haven't I met you yet by the way?" Tanaka asked.

"Sick leave. So what's the boss got you doing?"

"Checking and moving crates. You know, grunt work."

"Well, he told me to help out so let's get going."

Tanaka shrugged. "Sure."

They walked together, lightly chatting as Bob asked some questions about Japan. Tanaka hadn't been back in years and he warned Bob that his knowledge was a bit outdated. At one point Bob glanced at the sky and frowned.

"What?" Tanaka asked.

"Gonna rain tonight. Lotsa rain."

"You can tell? How?" Tanaka asked, surprised. "The weather's been all over the place since those aliens showed up three years ago."

"Experience. Should just become a weather forecaster, it'd sure as hell pay better than this."

"Huh." He didn't really have anything to say to that. He took Bob at his word. He'd certainly heard much stranger things, not even counting _those _one and a half years.

"Alright, let's get this over with," Bob said, walking ahead as the warehouses came into view behind all the metal containers. "Warehouse 2, right?"

Tanaka replied in the affirmative and followed.

They both walked in, still lightly chatting. The open container on a trailer by the wall was immediately visible. As were the crates inside.

Bob checked his clipboard. "S'posedly, they're just wooden chairs. Well, let's give 'em a look, see if there's anything outta place. Truck's right there, too," he added, pointing out a truck with the logo of some company or other on it.

"Check if there's any more, I'll look at this lot," said Tanaka.

"Got it. Have fun."

"I wish," Tanaka retorted, walking up to the crates. Once he was sure Bob was a safe distance away, he muttered the words he'd learnt long ago and _looked _at the nearest box.

After a second or two of concentration, a stream of 'feelings' came to him.

"_With all due respect, Master … you're terrible at this. I highly doubt you will ever improve at this beyond your current level."_

Technically, they weren't wrong. He hadn't gotten any better at it, but the activation time had shortened from the half minute it had been at the start to around two seconds now.

The goal of the variant of Structural Analysis he'd tried to learn was to see through solid objects and at least make out the outlines of whatever he couldn't see. What he instead achieved was something quite a bit different.

When Tanaka _looked _at objects, he couldn't make out the shapes within, but he did receive 'feelings' based on their material composition. His brain interpreted those 'feelings' as colors in his vision, and he'd learned to recognize what the different colors meant.

A vast range of browns assaulted his vision. Wood was headache-inducing sometimes – even the simplest chunk consisted of a few dozen shades. Specks of gray danced among the whirlpool of brown, indicating small quantities of metal – probably the nails and stuff holding the pieces together.

Tanaka shut it off and quickly looked away before the headache could escalate from 'vaguely noticeable' to 'vividly annoying'. As he did, his eyes fell on a container in the corner.

It was a 4x4x10 meter sea green metal box that had arrived three days ago. According to the boss, orders were to leave it untouched until the owners arrived.

Tanaka had gotten curious and taken a _look _when no one was around. It was a good thing too; him falling to his knees with his hands held tightly about his scrunched up eyes would have raised questions. It was a good thing he managed to restrain himself from screaming too.

One _look _at the crate had nearly blinded him, and left him with a painful headache that only gradually receded over the course of the day. Whatever was in that container, was incredibly powerful. He'd only made that mistake once before, several years ago. In his defense, that was the last thing he expected to find in a random shipyard.

He'd asked around as to who had delivered it. Strangely, no one seemed to know. Even more strangely, while the records showed it was legitimate cargo, they couldn't find any information on a sender.

Tanaka wondered what it was. Black market magi business? A new weapon to use against the Sirens? He entertained the thought that it was one of those elusive Wisdom Cubes – with the power he was 'seeing', it would certainly make sense – but he dismissed it as being _too _ridiculous. No one in their right minds would be transporting something so valuable in this way.

He thought about having a peek tonight. Something so powerful sitting unidentified in public didn't sit right with him. Bob had said there would be heavy rain tonight. Perhaps that would be his chance to have a look with no one the wiser.

But those were thoughts for later. For now, menial labor awaited.

_***~Night time~***_

"When you said 'heavy rain', I didn't expect it to be _this _heavy," the boss muttered, staring out the window.

"To be honest, I didn't either," shrugged Bob.

All the employees of the yard were currently within their personal cafeteria, sitting at various tables and chatting, as they had nothing better to do. There was no urgent work, so everyone chose to sit inside and wait out the storm.

It was quite the storm. Rain fell in thick curtains. Thunder boomed every few seconds. Lightning brightened the windows occasionally. No one wanted to brave such terrible weather.

Well, almost no one. Bob looked around the packed cafeteria. "Boss, you see Tanaka anywhere?" he asked after a second.

Boss looked around. "Guess he's stuck somewhere else. No way he's out there in _that_," he shrugged.

*~B~*

Tanaka was, indeed, out there in _that_.

As he shrugged a cloak into better position, he walked towards where the warehouse. Between the rain and mist, the vision was horrendous.

The 'cloak' was a large, rectangular black cloth with gilded lines. It was unremarkable at first glance, but then again, most of his possessions were.

It had two distinct, special properties. One of which was that it protected its wearer from wind and water. So even in this storm, he wasn't getting wet.

It was a farewell gift from a friend, like almost all his possessions were.

"_It is time for us to go, Lord Magus. We do not belong in this time. However, I, to my utmost shame, would not feel comfortable leaving you empty handed. And thus, for you, Lord Magus, I have this."_

It was perfect for travelling through a storm like this.

Upon catching sight of the warehouse, he quickened his pace. The various buildings were clumped together, true, but it was still a minute's walk from the cafeteria to the second warehouse.

Getting a bit closer, he noticed an oddity and stopped in his tracks.

The doors were open. The doors should not be open.

There certainly shouldn't be what seemed to be armed guards standing sentry by them. Guards armed to the teeth, with black goggles and masks hiding any identifiable features. Kevlar vests protected their torsos, and they wore heavy black boots.

Something was up, and there was no way it was a coincidence: it definitely had something to do with the mystery container. Was it some secret military or black market shipment after all?

Tanaka changed gears and went around the building. There was a tiny crack in one of the side walls. It was hard to notice from inside, but just large enough to peer through.

The guards didn't notice him, thanks to the other special characteristic of the cloak: it granted the wearer low ranked Presence Concealment. It wasn't quite invisibility, but a perception filter of sorts that affected ordinary humans the most.

His suspicions rising, he reached the crack on the side of the building. He looked through and spotted several things.

First, there were several SUVs parked inside.

Second, and most important, that suspicious container had been opened, and its cargo had been hauled out.

In shape, it seemed to be an ordinary black speedboat, but inside it, where there was normally space for passengers to sit, something shone red. Whatever it was, it had been kept wrapped, judging by the long pieces of cloth that had been tossed to the side. Torpedoes were attached to either side, and there was a machine gun on a stand near the back.

A dark skinned man with long blond hair tied in a side-plait walked towards the boat. He stuck his hand into the shining redness, and pulled out a piece, inspecting it.

It was a small red crystal that glowed lightly. "Hm. Acceptable," he mused, stowing it back.

He snapped his fingers and one guard came up, holding a briefcase. Approaching the blond man, he lifted it and opened it.

Tanaka fought down a gasp. There were two objects inside of similar dimensions. He'd never personally seen them but it wasn't hard to recognize the cubic objects.

Wisdom Cubes. But these weren't blue. One looked much like the pictures he'd seen, but purple-pink. The other looked as though it was made of colorless glass, with a tiny white spark in the middle.

Another armed guard went up to the speedboat from the other side. He too carried a suitcase that he opened, taking something out and placing it within the boat. Since this one had his back to Tanaka, he didn't see exactly what it was.

The blond man took both Wisdom Cubes. He pocketed one and placed the glassy one in the boat. Finishing that, he took a few steps back.

It was then that Tanaka noticed that some sort of circle had been drawn on the ground where the speedboat lay. Since he couldn't see much of the circle, he couldn't tell for sure what it was for.

"Step back. You don't want to be caught in it," the blond warned.

"We gonna see a light show, sir?" one guard eagerly asked.

The man chuckled. "Yes, and it will be quite loud too. That there's a tremendous storm to mask it is a stroke of luck."

He gave the guards a few seconds to move out of the way, and then cleared his throat, pointing an open palmed arm at the boat.

"**Let silver and steel be the foundation…"**

Tanaka started. _A Summoning chant?!_

Changes were immediately apparent. The transparent Cube began to pulse, the spark inside growing until it was a bright light that fully suffused the Cube.

As the now-identified magus continued to chant, lines of white light began to spread from the Cube onto the boat. They elongated and split, crisscrossing over the boat until it had been divided into dozens, maybe hundreds of sections.

Strong gusts of wind originated from nowhere, circling the now glowing boat, made visible by the dust they were picking up from the ground. The red glow of the large mass of crystals intensified, then lightened in color, before transmuting into a white energy that flowed into the Cube like water, and the Cube glowed even brighter.

" – **come forth from the ring of restraint, keeper of the balance!"**

And quite suddenly, the entire contraption exploded into a blinding, roaring geyser of light.

The magus took an involuntary step back, shielding his eyes with a raised arm. Tanaka edged away from the crack squinting.

From within the geyser, he could see the silhouette of the speedboat breaking apart into fragments. Those fragments then began to reassemble into a shape that was humanoid, but also not.

When the light died down and he could clearly see again, Tanaka's eyes widened.

The figure standing in the circle looked to be a pale human girl of short stature. Her hair was wild and white, reaching her shoulders, and her eyes an eerie lifeless yellow. She was attractive, fairly, but gave off the feeling of a mechanical doll.

A black 'rigging' had formed around her. Twin torpedo launchers made up the ends at either side of her and the machine gun jutted over her right shoulder.

Her clothes consisted of a sleeveless, backless green vest and darker green shorts. In either hand was a spear, one longer and blood red, the other short and yellow.

"Commencing preliminary self-diagnostics," the girl announced in a robotic voice. "No irregularities detected."

The magus stared for a second and then began to laugh. Harder and harder with every passing second. "HAHAHAHA! Success! Great success! I, Atrum Galliasta, have successfully created the first Siren Demi-Servant in existence! Splendid!"

_Siren, _Tanaka realized. _That's a Siren!_

The girl eyed the laughing magus. "Individual identified as command unit. Greetings, Master," she said.

Atrum grinned. "Perfect," he said, savoring the word. "The materials used were less fresh than I'd have liked, but I cannot argue with the success. I've now proven that it's possible. Hmm. You," he directed at the Siren. "You are to be called Lancer."

"Acknowledged," she replied. "Designation 'Lancer', accepted. Your orders, Master?"

"For the time being, you will be my bodyguard. If anything or anyone attempts to attack me, you are to eliminate them. This order stands regardless of your other tasks."

"Command acknowledged," Lancer replied, and then walked towards Atrum.

One of the guards let out an appreciative whistle. "Damn," he said. "I'd like to give her a taste of my torpedo, if you know what I mean."

"Speak not such crass talk within earshot," Atrum reprimanded. "I have a job for the rest of you."

"Oh! This is the fun part, innit?" one guard said enthusiastically.

"I suppose. You know what do?" Atrum asked.

"Kill 'em and then stick 'em with this," the guard replied, patting a bunch of pen-shaped objects on his belt.

"Good. Half of you, get going. I don't want anyone alive in this yard besides us. Oh, and our insider."

"Roger that!"

Half the guards left the warehouse, all sounding upbeat, a stark contrast to the genocide they were planning.

Tanaka was frozen in position. Everything was happening too fast. Should he stay and face the magus? No, as long as that Siren was there, there was nothing he could do. But then shouldn't he do something about the mooks? No, even with all his tricks there was nothing he could do! This was far too big for him to solve alone. He always had help before! He could never do anything alone! Not even Mashu was –

His moment of indecision cost him. Lancer stared sharply at his position. "Observation: there is a spectator," she announced.

That shocked Tanaka into moving. _Shit, shit, shit! _He ran for his life, stowing away the cloak since it made him slower.

"Oh? I didn't sense any – wait, there they are. Curious. Fetch him."

_BOOM!_

It was over in an instant.

The warehouse wall exploded as Lancer crashed through it. Tanaka froze. He knew without looking back that she had spotted him. And with her speed – that of a Siren _and_ apparently a Demi-Servant to boot – running any further was absolutely pointless.

Another moment passed and Lancer had grabbed the back of his shirt. Without care, she quickly dragged him back through the debris, painfully jolting everything, and deposited him on the ground before Atrum like a garbage bag. "Target acquired," she reported.

Tanaka heard the cocking of several large guns. In the distance, beyond the heavy rain, he also heard bullets being fired and screams of several men. He knew most of the men dying over there, he was painfully aware of that fact.

Logically, he knew there was nothing he could have done. He knew it was going to happen and he was powerless to do anything about it. But the failure to protect them still weighed heavily on him.

Still, he couldn't forget to protect himself as well. He did his best to look frightened, hoping he was convincing enough.

"Interesting," the blond magus mused, staring him down as he was held kneeling in place.. "You are … Gudao Tanaka?" he said, glancing at the name tag on Gudao's uniform. "The name doesn't ring a bell. That aside, how did you escape my notice? No, don't bother telling me. You. Search him," he ordered one of his goons.

Rough hands callously patted him down, the man behind them uncaringly using force to do so. They quickly found the one object on his person – his phone. Atrum stared at it. "I don't see anything mystical or special about it. It's just a phone."

"These models are usually slimmer," one of the goons said. "I could be wrong, but that's how it looks to me."

"Hmm…" Atrum continued to think, turning the phone over and over in his hands. He pressed the home button, stared for a second, then shrugged. "You seem like a smart person. What do you think about joining us?"

Gudao spoke a carefully measured second later. "Wh-What do you mean?"

"Oh so you _can _talk. As for what I mean, well it's quite simple really. You're either with us or against us and if you're against us we'll dispose of you."

"Wh-Who's we?" Gudao asked.

"We," Atrum began slowly, "are the Real Heroes. Unlike the rest of the world, we believe the Sirens are right. Well, most of us do. I'm a magus. For me, it's simply a mutually beneficial working relationship."

"Is-Is that why you have that Siren?"

"In a sense. If you want to know more, you can go ahead and join us. Or die, whichever suits you better."

"I–"

"Master," Lancer interrupted. "Enemy unit is feigning fear. This unit can detect that individual Gudao's heartbeat is stable.'

"Is that so." Atrum's demeanor changed. "What are you then? An undercover agent? An Azur Lane operative?"

Gudao stayed quiet.

"Oh, whatever. Kill–"

Intervention arrived.

Lancer suddenly moved to right behind Atrum, spinning the red spear in her right hand like helicopter blades.

Not a moment later, a storm of bullets blasted them from the open doors.

Lancer's move defended Atrum, but the others weren't as lucky. Shouts filled the warehouse as the guards fled from the widespread barrage. Gudao himself was safer than most, being right behind Atrum. The powerful bullets easily ripped holes in the walls or containers it hit.

"Tch. Guess we were noticed," Atrum said. He dropped Gudao's phone and took out the purple-pink Cube and squeezed it. It contracted and glowed, then emitted a wave of purple light that travelled over Atrum's body, forming a hooded purple cloak. It looked familiar but Gudao couldn't place why –

The Cube morphed into a long staff and Gudao realized. _Medea's staff!_

No sooner that he'd realized that Atrum raised it. Its head crackled with power and he slammed it down, end striking the ground hard.

A tremendous bolt of pink lightning burst from the head. It blasted out the open doors, flash-boiling the heavy rain, and struck outside with a large boom. The warehouse shook. Dust fell from the ceiling.

"Lancer," he ordered. "Dispose of my enemies."

"Acknowledged." In a burst of speed, Lancer vanished from view.

The rain of bullets stopped. "Right," Atrum said, turning around. "Where were we?"

He was speaking to no one. Gudao had vanished. The phone he had dropped was also nowhere to be seen.

Atrum sighed. "Incompetent morons–"

He stopped.

The guards had all been disabled by shots to the legs. Bullets had lodged themselves in the backs of their knees. But there weren't as many. Some had disappeared too.

But that made no sense. The attack had come from the other direction. So where…?

That boy. Gudao. It had to be. Lancer had said so, hadn't she? He was calm. Wily. A manipulative bastard. Just like Jas–

What? Who did he just think of? The boy's name was Gudao, not –

*~B~*

Three guards had run in pursuit of Gudao. They had chased him all the way to the maze of cargo containers.

"Split up," one said. "You're armed. He's not. Take care of him fast and get back to the boss."

They duly did so. Each entered the maze through a different passage.

One walked on, scanning intently, sweeping the area in front of him with the aim of his gun. His goggles had various filters and enhancers in it. Without it, he may have been blind in this downpour. With how alert he was, there was no way he'd be surprised –

Some sort of wire wrapped around his neck as he passed a gap in the containers. He reflexively squeezed the trigger, but before he could react further, electricity passed through his. He shouted in pain as he was painfully shocked, bullets spraying out of his gun in a wide arc, peppering dozens of holes in the nearby containers.

He quickly lost consciousness. His attacker disposed of the wire and moved on.

"Hey, did you hear that?!" someone shouted.

"Find that brat!"

The second grunt moved toward the noise. Even with their specialized goggles, it wasn't easy to see in this weather.

He reached the location and caught sight of his downed comrade. He made to shout a warning, but it was too late.

Something grabbed him by the back of vest and flung him at the nearest container. He slammed into it, disoriented, and taking advantage of that exact moment, he was grappled from behind.

The last thing his right eye saw was a hand glowing with bright blue sci-fi looking lines. Then a thumb jabbed him, breaking through the lens. He felt a searing pain in his eye before blacking out.

His attacker dropped the limp body, took a step back and paused at the sound of a gun cocking. "Found you, you son of a bitch!" the third man snarled at Gudao. "So you've got some hocus pocus shit too, huh? Well it ain't gonna save you this time! Eat lead!"

_BANG!_

The mook suddenly crumpled to a side, his gun firing wildly. He fell down on his back. As he struggled to get back up, a foot slammed into his face hard enough to break his goggles. He stopped moving. Gudao looked up.

It was a young woman with pale blond hair tied in a bun of braids at the back of her head. Her hair concealed one eye from view and the other golden eye scrutinized him impassively.

She wore what looked like a black-and-white Victorian dress. A black longcoat was draped over her shoulders. Knee length brown boots covered her legs. Her knees and a significant portion of her thighs were bare. There was an empty gun holster on her left hip. Below it, strapped to her left thigh and somewhat concealed was a sheathed dagger.

The woman stared at him quietly for several seconds. Gudao belatedly realized his right thumb was soaked in blood and wiped it off on his trousers.

"Who are you?" the woman finally asked.

"No one important. Who are _you_?" Gudao returned.

"You cannot expect me to answer if you don't answer yourself," the woman replied flatly.

"My name's right here and I'm pretty sure you've already seen it," Gudao said, tapping his name tag.

"That does not tell me who you are."

"Like I said, no one important."

The woman remained quiet for a few more seconds. "An unimportant person," she said slowly, "would not be able to take down three armed men on their own."

"Two," he reminded her. "You took out the last guy – thanks – but we don't have time to chat. More are probably coming."

"I took care of them," she said simply. "They won't be walking anywhere for a while."

Gudao paused. "… Did you kill them?" he asked eventually.

The woman's expression didn't change. It never seemed to change; it was vaguely disconcerting.

"No," she answered. "Killing these humans is not necessary."

Comprehension dawned. "You're a ship girl," Gudao realized.

The woman paused; this merely looked as though she had gone silent again. "Why did I mention that…?" she muttered. She looked back at Gudao with a sharp glare. "Do you possess powers of persuasion as well?"

"No?" Gudao answered, confused. "What makes you think that?"

"I did not miss you using some form of magecraft."

Gudao relaxed. "Oh, so you know. Good. And no, I can't do anything like that. Anyway, listen."

The woman quietly listened.

"That Siren is a Demi-Servant merged with the Irish Lancer Diarmuid Ua Duibhne. The red spear can go through most magic like it's not there and the yellow one can inflict wounds that never heal." Gudao paused for a breath. "I'm not sure if she can use them like that, but it won't hurt to know."

The woman's expression did not change.

"The magus, Atrum Galliasta, used some sort of Wisdom Cube to gain the powers of Medea of Colchis. He has access to really powerful Single-Action spells, can probably fly, has a bizarrely shaped dagger that can sever contracts and I'm not sure what else, she always seemed like she could do anything," Gudao explained quickly.

The woman continued to stare him. Gudao felt like he was being inspected under a microscope.

"Sheffield," she said suddenly.

"What?"

"My name," Sheffield explained shortly, then put a hand to her ear. "Prinz, Ayanami, can you hear me?"

*~B~*

Prinz Eugen was not having a great night.

She had her routine all figured out. It consisted of drinking at the bar and teasing Hipper. Possibly both simultaneously.

Normally she would have enjoyed the chance to fight and kill a Siren – not just one of their machines, but an actual Siren! – but quite frankly, the weather where she had been deployed to was just atrocious. Not even she could enjoy fighting in such horrible conditions.

She nevertheless agreed to go to this warehouse in this shipyard somewhere in the States – she couldn't be bothered to remember where. Sheffield had instructed her to open fire as soon as the warehouse was in sight. Ayanami incapacitated the guards outside – they never even saw her coming. They were hilariously unprepared to deal with ship girls.

Prinz had just prepared herself for a quick and easy job she'd forget about once she went back and downed a bottle or two when an enormous pink lightning bolt crashed down on her location. She managed to raise her shield in time and managed to avoid electrocution.

So they were dealing with magic. That was annoying.

The pedants at the base kept correcting her and saying it was magecraft, not magic. It all boiled down to the same Abracadabra shit, didn't it? What's the difference?

Then the strange Siren dual wielding spears attacked. Ayanami intercepted her, and of the two she was the one with the sword, so Prinz was stuck providing fire support.

And that wasn't even the end of it. No, the Siren she'd been deployed against was utterly _boring_! Some of the elite mooks she had seen and killed before had more personality and _they _didn't usually talk.

Fighting this melee focused Siren with a very simplistic rigging was like fighting a mechanical doll. Destroying mass-produced Siren tech was more interesting than this girl.

Eugen would grudgingly admit that this Siren was lethally efficient. Her skill with the spears was no joke. And maybe, just maybe, she was faster than Eugen.

It wasn't quite doing anything to improve her soured mood though.

[Prinz, Ayanami, can you hear me?]

"Ja, loud and clear," Eugen responded.

[Hai,] was Ayanami's short response.

[I have information,] Sheffield got right to the point. [The Siren's yellow spear may or may not cause lasting damage if it inflicts a wound. Prinz, the red one may or may not break through your shield like nothing.]

"Oh, _wonderful_," Eugen grumbled. "Perfectly not unclear."

[Prinz,] a fourth voice reprimanded.

"Right, right. Don't block the red one and don't get hit. Simple enough. But why are you here too, Grey Ghost?" she asked the fourth voice. "Isn't that a bit much?"

[I was in the area, and you know I can't just look the other way. That aside, Sheffield, where did you get this information? Is it reliable?]

Sheffield didn't respond for a second. During that second, Ayanami and the Siren exchanged several blows. Ayanami jumped back and Eugen took the chance to unload another volley at their opponent, which the Siren narrowly dodged.

[It appears so,] Sheffield finally said. Eugen narrowed her eyes. Why did she avoid the first question? For the moment, she let it slide.

"It would make sense," Prinz mused, dodging out of the way of return fire. "This thing isn't using its rigging nearly enough. It's favoring the spears too much."

As if she had just tempted fate, the Siren launched both torpedoes, carefully aimed at both the ship girls. Ayanami countered with her own as she leapt back further to avoid the blast, and Eugen threw up her shield.

The explosion was far larger than a torpedo's blast had any right to be. Eugen gritted her teeth as she skidded back on the water's surface.

That grimace turned into a grin. This might be more fun than she thought.

[Incoming air strike,] the fourth voice warned. [Get clear.]

Eugen heard the sound of plane engines.

A glance up at the sky showed a fleet of three planes approaching. No fool she, Eugen wisely got clear as they began their bombing run.

The explosions lit up the sea and were likely visible from far off. They blasted away the rain and caused large waves to emanate on the water's surface. Prinz simply chose to hover a couple of feet above the water surface.

A quick glance at Ayanami revealed that the agile destroyer was managing quite well. She was capable of taking on fights well above her weight class; she would be fine.

Eugen shifted her gaze to far at sea. An ordinary human would probably not spot it through the heavy rain, but there was a lone human shape, standing on the water in the distance.

Eugen returned her gaze to her opponent. Once the explosions cleared, the Siren was visible. She was charred in several places and her clothes were quite torn but –

Eugen's eyes widened. Before her eyes, the torn clothes began to mend themselves. In a matter of seconds, they were brand new again. "That's not fair," she complained.

"Ammunition depleted," the Siren said monotonously. "Recalculating tactics. Decision: melee focus."

Saying so, it dashed at Eugen with surprising speed, the red spear's point blurring towards her.

Eugen's left rigging opened its jaws and snapped shut on it. Undeterred, the Siren swept the yellow spear forward. The other jaw of her rigging locked around it as well.

There was a short struggle. The Siren was strong – Eugen would have been surprised if it wasn't – and what it did next surprised her. The Siren levered herself higher into the air and then let go of both spears, which promptly dematerialized. The Siren raised its arms, the spears once again materializing in her grip and stabbed them down like one would drive poles into the ground.

Eugen launched torpedoes at point blank range and let the shockwaves buffet her away. It caused her damage as well, but that was unavoidable.

[Eugen, disengage,] Grey Ghost said over their communicator.

"Trying," she retorted. The Siren ignored the damage the blast did to it and rapidly approached again.

Eugen fired another volley to keep her away. The Siren spun the yellow spear to block the attack and then raised the red one to parry Ayanami's surprise attack.

[I'm sending the second wave,] Grey Ghost warned. [Ayanami, fall back.]

[Hai,] was Ayanami's short response again. She imitated Eugen and launched torpedoes at point blank range, before retreating. Her torpedo firepower was significantly higher so the tactic caused quite a bit of damage to herself.

Bomber planes arrived again for another air strike. Eugen saw the machine gun on the Siren's right shoulder aim at the planes. She heard it click, empty. She saw the Siren raise the red spear before the bombs fell and the explosions obscured it from view.

*~B~*

All things considered, it was becoming a strange mission.

When the Siren signal was detected, an alert went out to the ships in the area. Sheffield was one of the two that was closest, so they headed out immediately. Prinz Eugen and Ayanami were sent from the base and they met up en route.

A plan was decided: Sheffield would disable the humans while the other three would engage the Siren. Of course, Sheffield knew better than to expect any plans to survive first contact with the enemy. Things were never so simple.

They arrived to see one of the warehouses with a hole in the side. Sheffield dematerialized her rigging and sneaked around to the hole. She was good enough at stealth that most humans would never see her coming, and even beings like Sirens would have to concentrate. She moved carefully, her footsteps light enough to not make audible sound. She kept a careful pace, skulking around containers to further back, estimating the field of vision of everyone present and making sure she stayed out of sight.

Fortunately, they were all looking at one singular thing so it wasn't too hard to get into position and fix a silencer to her gun barrel. Ready, she took a further look at the scene, soaking in the details.

She saw a blond man, several armed guards and a Siren standing around a captured yard worker. Why they hadn't killed him yet, she didn't know.

Sheffield quietly gave Prinz the order to fire and immediately bullets rained into the warehouse. The Siren moved to defend the magus and the other guards scattered.

The man retaliated by enshrouding himself in a purple cloak from an unusual Wisdom Cube, and then turning the Cube into a staff, from which he fired a massive lightning bolt.

So they were dealing with a magus. That would complicate things.

And yet that wasn't the most curious thing. The most curious thing was the sole survivor.

Sheffield clearly saw how the moment the magus counterattacked the black haired man had picked something up and run for it with unusual speed for a human. Three of the guards noticed him flee and followed, but their shouts of warning as they left went unheard in the din.

Sheffield herself used the din to shoot every remaining guard, accurately hitting them in the backs of the knee. Her bullets were filled with a potent tranquilizer – a unique make courtesy of Akashi – and the shot men went down instantly. She attempted to shoot the three that were leaving but missed.

She should have ignored them and just shot the magus, but she was unsure whether the bullets would affect him what with the potent magecraft he was displaying. She ran out of time as the thunder ended and she faced a dilemma.

Should she confront the magus and the Siren? No, he'd sent the Siren away to fight their assailants, so it would be just him. It would be the logical thing to do.

But if she ignored the possible killing of a bystander when she could still save them, the fact would get out. Ship girls were created to protect humanity; she couldn't just ignore that duty. Her Majesty would be displeased.

Having made her decision, Sheffield dashed off in pursuit before the magus noticed. The entire incident took place in a matter of seconds.

Upon returning to the heavy rain outside, Sheffield spent half a second considering where to go. If the man really was as calm as the Siren had said, then he must have known where the best way to go was. Deciding on her destination, Sheffield headed for the yard.

The maze wasn't easy to navigate since Sheffield wanted to stay hidden and retain her element of surprise. She walked slowly, alert, until she heard gunshots.

"Hey, did you hear that?!" she heard someone shout. Sheffield made her way towards the source of the sound.

What she expected to see was a dead worker, or signs of a struggle at the best.

She certainly did not expect to find the worker with a downed guard at his feet, and another pointing his large gun at the man.

"There you are, you son of a bitch," she heard the man with his back to her say. She tuned out whatever else he was saying, aimed at his right leg and fired.

The man flinched as he fell to his side, his gun firing wildly. Sheffield broke his goggles with a stomp as he passed out from the tranquilizer. Finally, she looked at the mystery man.

He had Asian features and slightly long black hair. The rain had matted it to his head, making it more apparent it was long enough to cover his blue eyes. He wore an unassuming uniform with the name tag 'Gudao Tanaka'.

Sheffield's eyes fell on his right thumb. Her eyes widened imperceptibly in surprise. Active magic circuits were just now dimming to nothing on his hand and his right thumb was caked in blood.

Clearly, he was no ordinary person. An undercover magus? Did such a thing even exist?

Sheffield stared at the man some more, trying to gauge what she could. He was breathing hard, but not too hard, and was staring right back, waiting for her to speak.

Finally she asked, "Who are you?"

"No one important. Who are _you_?" he shot back.

Recollecting what she had seen mere moments ago, Sheffield decided to test a theory.

"You cannot expect me to answer if you don't answer yourself," she said in Japanese.

"My name's right here and I'm pretty sure you've already seen it," he replied, also in fluent Japanese.

Trying Chinese this time, she said, "That does not tell me who you are."

"Like I said, no one important," he repeated, in Chinese as well.

Sheffield paused. Fluency in three languages wasn't uncommon, but he looked as though he hadn't realized they were shifting languages. Perhaps…

"An ordinary person," she began slowly, speaking Latin, "would not be able to take down three armed men on their own."

"Two," he corrected, and it took effort not to give anything away when he did so in the exact same language. "You took out the last guy – thanks – but we don't have time to chat. More are probably coming."

… This was unusual. English, Japanese and even Chinese she could accept, but Latin as well? Translation magecraft, perhaps? They weren't exactly uncommon.

"I took care of them," Sheffield answered, reverting to English. "They won't be walking anywhere for a while."

"… Did you kill them?" he asked.

Sheffield replied and only a moment later realized something was wrong.

She'd just given herself away to a stranger by accident. That _never _happened.

So she believed she was fully in the right for accusing Gudao Tanaka of having mental manipulation skills.

Gudao waved off her concerns and moved on to give her valuable information. Once again, Sheffield was surprised and not just a little alarmed at how she trusted a stranger at his word. There was something about him…

Sheffield carefully scanned Gudao's expression for any signs that he was not being truthful. She found none. He also sounded like he knew exactly what he was talking about.

_How exactly did he meet a legendary witch from so many centuries ago? _Sheffield knew about Servants, but she also knew about most grail wars and the man in front of her wasn't at all familiar.

The logical conclusion was that he was here under an alias. Could she trust him? And more importantly, _should _she trust him?

Deciding that it wouldn't hurt to at least relay the info he gave her, she contacted her allies. She'd only meant to tell Prinz Eugen and Ayanami since they were the ones directly fighting the Siren but they all heard.

_[That aside, Sheffield, where did you get this information? Is it reliable?]_

Sheffield paused once again to look at Tanaka Gudao one last time. And finally, she saw it.

_Ah, there it is._

His eyes seemed empty and dull before. Covered as they were by his wet bangs, it was hard to tell there was something else, but this time, she saw it.

What she'd initially thought were the cold eyes of a magus were actually eyes that spoke of immense experience. Gudao Tanaka, whoever he was, had been through a lot. Sheffield had seen eyes like that before: on battlefield veterans. Specifically, veterans who, although deeply affected by long periods of warfare, had not grown jaded to what had driven them to the battlefield in the first place. Veterans who retained a reasonable amount of optimism, despite all they had been through.

She'd question why he looked like that later. For now, Sheffield decided to trust him at his word.

"It appears so," she finally said.

Sheffield didn't quite hear what Eugen said in response.

Her sharp senses blared a warning and she rushed at Gudao, knocking him to the ground.

A moment later, very large icicles – large, _sharp_ icicles – pierced through a container to her left, passed through where Gudao had been standing and dug through one on the right.

"Tch. Seducing women to protect you again? That's just like you."

Sheffield stood up, eyes trained on the man who'd seemed to just float to the area, strange butterfly-patterned cloak spread out behind him.

She wasted no time and activated her rigging, firing her anti-air guns at the man. He was a magus borrowing a Servant's power; she would be surprised if he didn't survive this.

She had no idea just how unprepared she was. The magus seemed to just disappear and reappear right next to her. Sheffield prided herself on reacting fast, but she wasn't fast enough for this.

There was an odd misshapen blade in his right hand. The shape was hugely impractical. But he'd pulled it from nowhere so that must mean –

"RULE BREAKER!"

At the same time, Sheffield's guns swiveled and fired.

The result was a loud explosive noise, masking the sound of _something _else. Both the magus and the ship girl flew to either side and slammed through containers.

There was a second of silence and then the magus chuckled. It grew into loud cackles. "Did you really think someone as important as I wouldn't have countermeasures to deal with one of you weapons? I am a magus, one of the best. Of course I would have devised myself some way of surviving your guns. Admittedly, I may not have survived if I wasn't like this," he mused, standing up and inspecting himself. "Being a Servant is quite something. It does sting, though. That's annoying."

Undeterred, Sheffield stood to face him again. She had seemingly dematerialized her rigging in the crash, so she summoned it again.

… And nothing happened.

_What?_

She couldn't feel the connection to her ship. It was _always _there, from the moment she had been created, yet now, she could not.

The magus grinned. It didn't look quite sane. "So _that's _what Rule Breaker does to your kind. I'd wondered."

To her credit, Sheffield didn't waste long being shocked. After only a moment she made to fire her pistol.

The magus was faster. He slammed the butt of the staff on the ground again and a bolt of lightning blazed through the air and slammed into her pistol.

Sheffield quickly let go of the overheated weapon. It made a bizarre dulled _thunk_ when it hit the ground, red-hot and deformed. "Ow," she muttered.

"None of that. Just stay there, I'll deal with you soon enough," the magus said, turning as Gudao got to his feet. "Finally. We meet again at last."

Gudao blinked. "… I've never met you in my life," he said.

For a moment, the magus looked confused. Eventually he shrugged. "Perhaps. Maybe you remind me of one of the starving kids. Feisty little brats, for how skin-and-bones they were."

Gudao went still. His demeanor changed to something Sheffield couldn't easily place. "… What? What starving kids? What did you do?" he asked harshly.

"Hmph. It's so like you to have the strangest sympathies. I needed fuel, of course, and what better fuel than human souls? I had to settle for some homeless children since those were the kind no one would miss. Tch. And I had to use so many of them. So inefficient."

Gudao seemed to be utterly lost for words.

"Seriously. One thousand just to power one measly low level Siren? Heh," the magus scoffed. "Highly inefficient. Truly the work of a third-rate–"

He stopped, frowning. "What? No. No, that's wrong. I'm not – I–"

Sheffield saw her chance and she took it without hesitation.

The very moment the magus was distracted, Sheffield leapt to her feet and charged him, drawing her dagger in one fluid motion.

Once again, she had unfortunately underestimated the versatility of the magus. Mere feet from him, a circle lit up on the ground below her and then there was a violent boom.

Some sort of mine spell exploded just underneath her. Pain shot through her entire body. Somehow, she hadn't gotten blown away, but the blast had stunned her, slowing her down.

A leg rose and slammed into her. This knocked her away. Hard. Sheffield hit the ground a good distance away, passing by Gudao and ending up behind him. Sheffield stumbled to her feet, wincing silently.

"Sneaky," the magus said. "You're a good fit for him. But did you really not think I would be prepared? I, a magus from the Age of Gods?"

"When you see it, fell the lighthouse," Gudao muttered just low enough that Sheffield could hear and immediately continued loudly, "No you're not. The Age of Gods is long over, and you're just a thing with no dignity. You're nothing like the Medea I know."

"And what would _you _know, you womanizing traitor?"

"Nothing. Absolutely nothing important. Just one thing: I'm going to make you pay."

And with that that cheesy boast … he tackled the magus.

The blond man sighed dramatically and easily sidestepped, holding out a foot to trip him. Gudao, however, was better than that. He did a small jump over the outstretched leg and instead of turning around, the moment he landed, he picked up speed and ran away.

The magus frowned. "As always, you're a cunning little weasel. Always trying to run."

Sheffield heard several clicking noises behind her. "Boss?" a voice said. "We can–"

"No," the magus interrupted. "That one is _mine._ You deal with that," he said, waving dismissively at Sheffield. "Do what you want, I care not."

The magus's cloak spread and his feet left the ground. "I can still see him," he said to himself. "Hmm. Was he always such a fast runner?"

He hovered off into the distance. Sheffield turned to whoever was behind her.

Apparently, while she had disabled most of the men in the warehouse, that was only half. There was a whole dozen other that she'd somehow missed. Ten were on the ground in a 5-3-2 formation, and two were standing on top of the containers at either side. All had guns trained on her.

That was a very embarrassing miscalculation. Sheffield had half a mind to punish herself like how Sirius was wont to do when she went back.

That's right: when. One Servant-empowered magus was troublesome. But a dozen armed men? While she was quite badly injured from a point blank explosion? Easy.

"'Do what you want', he says," one of them muttered. "Uh, hey, boss? Could we keep this one alive for a bit? I'd like to see what it's like."

Vaguely, Sheffield registered that her clothes were torn, and the long coat had been dropped at the side where the magus's initial attack had sent her crashing to.

"Son," another – the leader, judging by what the first had said – slowly replied, as if speaking to a child, "it _will _break your dick."

Mentally, Sheffield agreed: she undoubtedly would.

"Not if y'all hold her at gunpoint."

_That wouldn't stop me._

"You really wanna beat your meat to a hunk of metal while the rest of us watch?" the leader asked bluntly.

"… Yeah, fair enough. Alright, let's see how much punishment it can take!"

All twelve guns fired.

Sheffield _moved_.

She jumped to her right with superhuman speed the moment they fired and they missed.

She landed with her feet on the side of the container to her right and ran along it. Simultaneously, she threw her dagger at a vanguard. It flew accurately, digging into his right leg and the man cried out in pain, stumbling down.

Sheffield ran until she was between the middle row and the rear guard and then kicked off.

Somersaulting horizontally, she kicked one of the middle row hard enough that he was sent flying forward, knocking over another vanguard. Sheffield twisted, slamming her heel into the head of the one in the middle. He crashed into a fifth. Two of the vanguard and the entire middle row were down.

Sheffield jumped again the moment her feet touched the ground, leaping at the container on the opposite side, dodging fire from the two above. She immediately kicked off the side she landed on, arms stretched above her head.

Reaching the sixth man, she grabbed him, levering herself around him and hammered her left shin into the neck of a seventh. A moment later, her right shin slammed into the other side of his neck. Now using the seventh as a lever, she spun, tossing the sixth at an eighth. Once she was on the ground again, the seventh's limp body spun like an errant leaf behind her.

_Eight down, four to go._

Assuming a runner's crouch for the half second after she landed, Sheffield dashed at one of the two rearguards. She slammed her right knee into his groin. Hard.

As he went flying back several feet, Sheffield allowed herself a momentary vindictive thought: _see? I did break your dick_.

Spinning on her left foot, she slammed her right heel into the other rear guard. Grabbing his gun and that of the one who was sent flying – it had fallen out of his grip – Sheffield first ran a short distance to avoid more bullets from the two above. She made sure to trample over the faces of those who were still moving, took half a second to aim once she stopped and fired both guns.

The two above stumbled off their perches as their legs gave out, shot, and hit the ground headfirst.

Sheffield spent a second to take a slow breath, and methodically checked whether the men were still alive. Not that she cared; they were enemies after all, but HQ would want them alive for interrogation.

That done, she looked around, spotted the tall lighthouse and squinted. Gudao – that bizarre man who seemed to radiate trustworthiness – had said 'when you see it', but what was she looking for?

Against all better judgment, Sheffield brought a hand to her ear, keeping an eye on the lighthouse.

*~B~*

Enterprise took a slow breath.

From where she stood out at sea, she had quite a good vantage point. The roiling waves were a bit much even for most ship girls but it was just an inconvenience to her. She had very good vision too. So, in spite of the terrible conditions, she could see well enough.

She could make out the skirmish nearer to the coast, and in the distance, even make out much of the dockyard.

She took a second to focus and then aimed her bow again.

[Enterprise, come in,] Sheffield's voice sounded suddenly from her earpiece.

"Enterprise here, what is it?" she replied.

[I need you to do as I say. Ready the strongest shot you are capable of, and aim it at the base of the lighthouse. Of the four of us, you're the one strong enough to topple it.]

Enterprise frowned. "The lighthouse?" she repeated, staring at the structure. "Why?"

[It's a nice plan and all, Sheffy, but how exactly is that going to help us kill this Siren?] Eugen asked.

[It's not,] Sheffield answered, surprising Enterprise. [This is to help defeat the magus that brought it here.]

[… Sheffield,] Eugen began. Enterprise could hear the frown. [Is this your plan or your mystery informant's?]

As carefree as Prinz Eugen seemed most of the time, she was incredibly sharp too. Enterprise herself hadn't thought to ask, but Prinz had a point: who was it and why was Sheffield putting her faith in them?

[… It is as you say. I'll explain when we have time to. For now, just know that I have adequate reason to trust him,] Sheffield said.

[Wow, who is this? An old flame?] Prinz asked.

… This was why most never realized how sharp Prinz actually was. She made it sound like she never took anything seriously.

[No,] Sheffield answered shortly. [Enterprise, prime your shot. Prinz and Ayanami, make sure the Siren can't break off to assist the magus.]

[So just do what we were doing anyway, ja?] Prinz replied sarcastically. [Fine by me. The sooner this is over with, the sooner I can get back. And I'd just opened that 70 year old wine, too,] she grumbled. [I hope Laffey hasn't gotten her hands on it.]

[Don't worry,] Ayanami reassured. [It's not Laffey's type of drink.]

[And how would you know that? You never saw the bottle.]

[No, but I know Laffey, yes.]

Enterprise stopped listening, deciding that there was nothing else important coming. She looked at the lighthouse in the distance and took a deep breath.

The carrier adjusted her grip on her large bow, aiming it at the bottom of the lighthouse. She placed three fingers on the bowstring, closed her eyes and concentrated.

"_Those Wisdom Cubes that power you? They're like huge batteries. They've got a capacity that very few of you have so far learned to fully use. Actually, I don't think any of you have fully learnt except maybe Mikasa but that's beside the point. The point is, you girls are capable of a lot more bang for your buck. You just have to figure out how."_

Enterprise hadn't quite figured it out, but she was closer than most.

She concentrated, searching deep within herself. She visualized a full fuel tank, and tried to open a faucet.

She felt more than saw her right hand take on a light golden glow. Sparks flew between the fingertips. As she continued to concentrate the glow began to intensify. She felt the 'weight' of the energy in her hand and slowly drew the bowstring back.

Like a steady stream, yellow light flowed out of her withdrawing hand. It seemed to just stop at a point a little beyond the bow itself. The light intensified and solidified, forming a long cylindrical shape.

Errant sparks and smoke-like streamers of energy emanated from the tip of the now-recognizable arrowhead shape. Instead of the usual spade-like shape of an arrowhead, this arrow got thicker halfway up its length, and then tapered off near the end, reminiscent of a torpedo.

Enterprise made the final adjustments to the aim, taking the storm winds and heavy rain into account. "I'm ready," she said. Sheffield didn't say anything but Enterprise was sure she heard it.

Enterprise waited.

*~B~*

Atrum Galliasta saw Gudao run through a door.

It took a moment to recognize what door it was, but when he did, he started laughing madly.

The foolish boy had run directly into the lighthouse. A total dead end. Perhaps he wasn't Jason after all.

Maybe he was attempting to hide somewhere inside. Should he just destroy the entire thing? No, he couldn't just let Jason die like that. He had to do the deed personally.

Fly to the top and work his way down? No, there would be a chance, however small, of Jason noticing his approach and trying to escape.

The best choice would be to follow him from behind, cutting off his escape routes.

Atrum waltzed into the doorway. He glanced at the staircase inside. There was an elevator, but the model looked ancient. That, and it was still there on the ground.

Approaching the staircase the magus heard commotion from above. Something that sounded like running steps and also small crashes of objects being left behind to impede him. Atrum laughed at the absurdity. Such paltry things would never stop a Servant!

He decided to cut the knot and sent streamers of fire and lightning up the stairs. They flew at high speed, exploding against whatever objects were in the way.

It certainly wouldn't kill Jason. But they would certainly maim him, leave him incapable of running. Atrum didn't bother physically walking up the stairs and instead hovered up, crossing entire flights in seconds. He reached the top at a leisurely pace.

The boy saw him enter, and backed up towards the wall, squinting through the powerful beam from the lighthouse bulb.

Curious. He expected to find him earlier, not at the top. And despite his earlier attack, the boy was unharmed.

Well, that was only to be expected. Jason was wily, after all.

But wait. Why did Jason's nametag say he was Gudao?

Who _was _Jason anyway?

No matter. All he needed to know was that this boy in front of him needed to die at his hands.

"End of the line, _boy_," Atrum taunted. "There's nowhere to run."

The boy didn't respond, continuing to back up, arms behind his back. Was he concealing something? A crowbar, perhaps? As if that would help! Atrum was amused by the mere thought.

"It really amuses me how some people seem to lose the ability to make rational decisions when frightened enough," Atrum began, smiling. "They do stupid things like climbing to the top of a lighthouse in a desperate attempt to run. You voluntarily ran headfirst into a dead end while leaving no significant barricades or obstacles behind!" the magus laughed.

The boy smiled, looking quite nervous. "Well, what can I say? It seemed like a good idea at the time."

"Whatever the case, you still just ran to your death! Well, I did order everyone at the docks be killed so I can't blame you for wanting to live a few more seconds. Still, those seconds are up, _boy_."

"Okay, first, I'm twenty-four, not a boy," the boy said. "Second, just shut up and take your best shot."

The magus shrugged, pointing the head of his large staff at him. The top-most gem began to glow with densely packed power.

"Now that I think about it, you're not quite like him," Atrum mused, unsure who exactly he was talking about. "You're both cowards, but he was a lot smarter."

"And how do you know I'm not still planning something?"

The magus narrowed his eyes, but dismissed the bravado. Whatever he had with him would not be effective on a Servant. Still, he'd wasted enough time, he decided. The staff-head glowed brighter.

A dense purple laser blasted out.

Which was somehow reflected at the light bulb, which promptly exploded.

Reflexively, Atrum held up an arm. He saw the object Gudao was holding.

_A mirror? Where did he – _

The moment he saw it, his mind crashed.

Atrum Galliasta's mental state was, in short, unhealthy. The prospect of using a Wisdom Cube to channel Servant abilities was brilliant in concept. All of the power and none of the troublesome personality attached.

The issue was, it was a very untested process. And Atrum was confident. If anything went wrong, a brilliant magus like himself would be able to work around it.

Atrum had no idea what he was getting himself into.

The Servant whose power he wanted to use was Medea, the Witch of Betrayal. From the moment he activated the Cube and began using its powers, Medea's thoughts and feelings – her negative thoughts and feelings – were invading and eroding his mind.

It was, simply put, driving him mad. And anyone who personally knew Medea of Colchis would be able to tell what was happening to the magus, whose mind was rapidly morphing into something else.

Gudao qualified.

When the mirror Gudao was holding had reflected Atrum's attack it had also shown Atrum something else. Something that pushed his already strained mind to the limit and broke it.

For a moment, in the chaos caused by the reflected attack, Gudao showed Atrum himself. Specifically, his own blonde hair.

But Atrum, as broken as he was, did not associate it with himself.

Instead, he recognized it as _that _hair.

_His _hair.

Atrum saw the image of a man he had never met in his life. He felt a deep-seated hatred he had never felt before. Logically, he knew those weren't his memories, but his fractured mind was no longer working on logic.

The simple reflection of a simple image superimposed itself onto the sudden tunnel vision he was experiencing. He didn't see double: he saw two separate things and his crazed mind put them together as one.

Standing before him was no longer Gudao Tanaka, someone reminiscent of a man he should not know.

It was the man himself.

"_JAAAASOOOOOOOON!_"

So enraged was he, that he initially did not notice Jason jumping out the open window.

No. He could not let that happen. He absolutely could not let that happen. He would not be robbed of a chance to brutally murder him by a mere fall.

Atrum spread his cloak and jumped right after him.

*~B~*

Enterprise stared in shock.

She had been able to make out – just – an altercation at the top of the lighthouse.

Something then happened which blew up the light itself.

And then the black-haired person jumped out of the tower.

Enterprise stared as he fell. There was something just below him. Something golden –

[Now!] Sheffield barked.

Startled out of her shock, Enterprise reflexively released the bowstring.

The arrow flew with the speed of a cruise missile. It struck true at the base mere seconds later.

There was a large explosion. Chunks of concrete flew everywhere. The lighthouse now had a large hole as if a majority of its base had been scooped out.

Gravity took over and the sheer weight of the building caused it to slowly topple.

*~B~*

"YOU'RE NOT GETTING AWAY, JASON!"

The magus flew out from the top and, veering sharply, zoomed down towards the falling Jason.

Too late. It was too late for him to notice what was wrong.

Jason had his right arm pointed in his direction, index finger and thumb outstretched. At the tip of his index finger, a ball of red-black energy swirled, growing stronger and stronger.

_A magus?! Jason wasn't – wait who's – _

"Gandr."

The bullet of energy shot out and splashed against the rapidly approaching Atrum. Caught entirely off guard, it was a shot impossible to miss.

On average, Gandr was a weak curse. It would barely affect someone with the powers of a Servant.

_His _Gandr, trained and enhanced by Medea herself, was significantly more effective.

It would paralyze anything and anyone for a few seconds, so long as they didn't have high Magic Resistance or moderate divinity, or the obvious exceptions of targets astronomically farabove Gudao in terms of power.

Using the power of a witch with divine blood he may be, none of the above applied to Atrum. He was just a mere human.

Atrum's limbs locked up. His muscles froze. He was rendered completely incapable of moving. Even his internal circulation of magical energy was disrupted. For a few seconds, he was totally helpless.

Those few seconds were enough.

A good distance below Gudao, a powerful bolt struck the lighthouse. The shockwave of the explosion buffeted at him, as he heard the slow rumbling of the building beginning to fall.

With his outstretched right hand, he grabbed onto Atrum's collar as the magus's momentum carried him closer. He pulled him to the left, twisting himself to hammer his feet onto the magus.

Reinforced legs slammed Atrum to the side of the falling building. With all the strength Gudao could muster, he pushed, pressing Atrum a few inches into the wall, then kicked off. Gudao sailed through the air in a large arc, reaching the water just where it was deep enough that the fall wouldn't kill him. He splashed down and strained himself to keep moving, swimming out of range of the falling building.

The lighthouse fell on its side. The upper chunk of it broke off when it hit the edge of the concrete ground and fell into the water with a large splash.

Tanking warship guns somehow was something. Being crushed between a falling building and solid ground was something else, especially when incapable of Reinforcement.

Atrum Galliasta was incapable of even screaming.

The rumbling crash of the building died down. Dust hadn't gone up from the collision, weighed down as it was by the heavy rain.

Gudao coughed, staring at the large wreck. "This is why you should have stuck to range," he muttered. "Idiot."

His left hand still had a death grip on his phone. The fingers of his right were unnaturally bent, however. Even with the best Reinforcement he was capable of, he counted himself lucky that he got away alive.

As the adrenaline wore off, he felt the throbbing pain from his right hand. And inside his chest. Gudao winced. "I think I broke a lot of ribs, too…"

*~B~*

Prinz Eugen wasn't sure exactly what had happened. But if her assumptions were correct, she was seriously impressed.

For a second, she just stared at the wreck that was formerly a lighthouse. Then she remembered her fight and returned her attention to the strange Siren.

Curiously, the Siren was also not attacking, choosing to stare at the wreck as well.

"Termination of local command unit confirmed," it finally said without inflection. "Commencing retreat."

Saying so, it just … sank. Like it suddenly stopped being able to stand on the water and just fell through.

"What–" Eugen began, rushing forward, and then she noticed the two objects that _hadn't_ fallen through.

She raised her shield just in time to protect herself from the explosion of the torpedoes. They canceled out her forward momentum. When Eugen could see again, there was no trace of the Siren.

"Are you kidding me? That's so anticlimactic," she sighed. "We should have brought a sub…"

She inspected herself one last time: she was distinctly the worse for the wear, with several bruises and cuts – from the red spear. She managed to avoid the yellow one after Sheffield's warning. The Siren had kept trying to shake off Ayanami to go after Prinz, which was why Prinz was worse off between the two.

Prinz sighed again and looked out to near the wreck. Ayanami had already gone to help the mystery man out of the water and back to land. She looked at them as Ayanami carefully held the black haired man as she skimmed across the waves.

Despite her dissatisfaction with the battle, Prinz Eugen felt a smirk play on her lips.

"I like this one."

*~B~*

An hour, the storm had thankfully passed.

Police sirens blared as more and more cars entered the scene. Many were already parked inside.

Sheffield leaned against a container for support and watched as policemen cuffed the unconscious armed men and towed them into vans. Ambulances placed bandages over some of their faces, those who had had their noses broken by Sheffield.

Sheffield's gaze rested over a red haired man for a second. Apparently they had an insider in the yard, who had helped hide their cargo here while away due to 'sick leave'. She glanced at his nametag for a moment – Robert something – then promptly forgot about him.

Enterprise was explaining the incident to a local police chief. With them was a man dressed like an Azur Lane official. The police chief was holding one of the small objects found on the mooks' persons: a sort of syringe with a large, thick needle, connected to a small glass cylinder filled with a scant amount of crystalline red dust.

No one was sure what to make of it, but it probably had something to do with the strangely shriveled up corpses of the rest of the yard workers. They looked shrunken, as if everything but their skin and bones had been sucked out. It was either some foul magecraft or Siren technology - and if it was the former it would be excused as the latter.

Out on the water, Ayanami was diligently helping to remove debris. They had caused a lot of property damage this time. That was going to be a hassle to explain, especially since they did so at the behest of a third party.

Speaking of whom, Gudao Tanaka had somehow disappeared. Prinz had too, saying she was going to find 'that fascinating man'. Sheffield could tell where he was as well, but the police who'd searched that area said they found nothing unusual. Curious.

Her communicator beeped. [Sheffield, come in. How did it go?]

"We defeated the magus and his platoon, but the Siren got away," she explained shortly.

She heard the click of a tongue on the other end. [… Well, that's good enough. Any complications?]

"… Not anymore." The moment the magus had died, Sheffield could feel the connection with her ship restored, like nothing had happened.

There was something else, however…

"Not anymore," Sheffield repeated. "But…"

[A 'but' from you means a lot. What is it?]

"… What can you find on an individual named Gudao Tanaka?"

*~B~*

Said individual sighed, leaning back against the container.

He'd found a secluded spot in the maze of containers and sat down against one. Gudao was sure that the police would search here – in fact, they already did – but nobody noticed him thanks to the cloak.

He would have left already, but he had to sit and wait for his wounds to heal. Recuperating took a while, even with a little boost.

Gudao heard approaching footsteps and he glanced up. "Ah, there you are," a female voice said.

A young woman with long ash-grey hair was walking right at him. Since she could see him despite the cloak, it was an easy guess that she was one of the ship girls.

Her hairstyle looked familiar. _It's a bit like Ishtar's, _Gudao mused. Judging by her uniform she was from the Ironbloods.

One of her bangs was red and looked sharp. Her red eyes looked a little like what he saw in himself when he looked in the mirror. Her uniform – if it could be called one – was mostly dark grey with red sleeves and open on the sides of her chest. He'd seen stranger fashion so he paid it no mind.

The woman sauntered up to him. "So," she began, a slight German accent on her words, "you're Sheffy's mystery man."

Gudao made a show of looking at himself curiously. "Last I checked, I wasn't very mysterious," he said.

"The cloak you're wearing right now says otherwise, Herr Tanaka. Or do you prefer Gudao?"

"Either's fine," he replied. "Can I help you with something, miss…?"

"Hmm? Oh just call me Jenny or something."

It was obviously a fake name. 'Jenny' was most likely poking fun at the fact that Gudao himself was using an alias and since he wasn't divulging his name, she wasn't either.

"Sure. So, what can I help you with, Miss Jenny?" Gudao repeated.

"Well," she said, sitting down opposite him, "I wanted to know who exactly was crazy enough to think of dropping a building on someone."

"Nobody," he replied automatically.

'Jenny' rolled her eyes. "Sure thing, Ulysses."

"Ulysses's whole thing was outsmarting whoever he came across," he pointed out. "And that's kind of what I did. The guy was way too strong for me to fight directly so I tricked him."

The woman scoffed. "It only worked because it was such a crazy idea."

"Exactly," he agreed. "And besides, falling from heights has always worked out for me," he added in a mutter.

The woman stared at him incredulously. "What are you, an ex-diver?" she demanded.

"No."

"Well, whatever. I have to ask, though, what if it didn't work? I got the gist of it from Sheffy, and sounds like this Atrum guy was an idiot," she said bluntly.

"Not an … okay, he was, but he also crazy," Gudao said, but didn't further elaborate.

"How did you know how to play him when you had allegedly never met him before? Was this because of that Servant thingy he did to himself? Are you some sort of mind-reading magician?"

"Magus," he corrected.

"Not you too," 'Jenny' grumbled. "What's the difference?"

"And no, I can't read minds. I just … figured out his deal and worked around it."

"How?" she asked.

"I'm going to refuse to answer that, sorry."

The woman hummed non-committedly. "Did you know the Siren was going to run away when the other guy died?"

"No, actually. I figured you girls would take care of it. I was just thinking about taking Atrum out," Gudao answered honestly.

"That's a lot of trust to put in people you've never met before."

He shrugged. "It's what you're good at."

"Being 'good at it' didn't stop the Siren from running away. Seriously, what a let-down…" she trailed off. A second later, she looked directly at him. "Speaking of trust, how did you get Sheffield to instantly trust you?"

The playful tone she'd had until now all but vanished. She was completely serious now. "What did you do, hypnotize her?"

'_If you did…' _was unsaid but the threat was clear.

"I wouldn't even if I knew how," Gudao answered, frowning. "And the trust went both ways. She could've just not listened to me. I didn't know for sure she would."

"… And you still pulled that stupid stunt?"

"It worked, didn't it?"

The woman's red eyes bored into him for a second, then shrugged. "I can't argue with the results," she commented.

Gudao shrugged too. "Maybe I just got lu–"

"No," the woman interrupted. "No, you did not just _get lucky_."

She said those last words coldly, almost disdainfully. The conversation died after that.

The next few minutes were spent in relative silence. Gudao noted that his injuries had stopped hurting. He could just leave soon and put all this behind him. He didn't want to get dragged into something huge, not again. An incident involving a Siren Demi-Servant was too much like the attention-grabbing first quest of RPGs to not lead to something a lot bigger.

'Jenny's communicator beeped. She put her hand to her ear. "Yeah, it's me. Everything went fine. Ish. I'll tell you after I've downed a bottle."

There was a pause and she smiled. Gudao noted it was quite different from the ones she'd shown him in their conversation: this one seemed sincere. He didn't voice it, of course. "Did I ever tell you you're the best?" she said.

Another pause and the smile turned into a sly smirk. "Get a new script, sister,' she said. "The stock tsundere lines are getting old."

The loud "HUH?!" in response was audible even to Gudao. Unconcerned, 'Jenny' sang "Bye~!" and hung up. "Sisters, huh?" she said out loud.

"Wouldn't know, I've never had younger siblings."

"Right. Younger."

Gudao was about to stand up when he heard more footsteps. He looked in that direction as 'Jenny' waved. "Oh, hey, Sheffy," she greeted. "We were just talking about how weird it was that you trusted him so easily."

The ship girl he'd met earlier stared at him impassively. _Seriously, Nightingale emoted more than her_, Gudao mused.

"You're right," Sheffield agreed. "It is strange. Who are you?" she asked directly.

Gudao raised an eyebrow. "I believe you already know my–"

"Gudao Tanaka did not exist a week ago," Sheffield interrupted. "And I highly doubt you are a week old homunculus. You are a veteran of some sort who has translation charms."

Gudao frowned. "How did you know I have translation charms?"

"I didn't. You just confirmed it."

Gudao winced silently. He'd fallen for one of the oldest tricks in the book.

"I switched languages four times in our initial conversation," Sheffield continued. "You did not notice."

Gudao sighed. "Stupid adrenaline," he muttered.

"And I have not completely ruled out that you are capable of manipulative magecraft and are just hiding it."

"Not doing either," he replied, feeling a little irritated that he was being repeatedly suspected of such.

"Another thing occurs to me," Sheffield went on. "How _did _you know I was a ship girl?"

Gudao sighed again. "It was the way you said 'humans'," he explained frankly. "Like you weren't one yourself. And given that I'd just seen a couple of Wisdom Cubes…" He shrugged. "Lucky guess?"

He missed the Ironblood girl's light frown at 'lucky'.

"You do realize that you've only raised more questions about yourself," Sheffield said.

"Questions I can refuse to answer," Gudao replied, standing up.

Sheffield briskly walked closer and put a gun to his head. "No, you cannot. This is not a mystery we can leave unsolved. You are clearly withholding a lot of valuable information. If not us, you will answer to our superiors."

Gudao glanced back. "If you had a spare, why didn't you use it back then?"

"That handgun _was _my spare," Sheffield answered. "I borrowed this one from a policeman and I intend to give it back when we l–"

She broke off for a moment. Then she looked sharply, her visible eye narrowed. Her facial expression did not change, but it was clear she was angry. "This is exactly what I'm talking about," said Sheffield sharply. "Not once but twice have I told you more than I intended to. I will ask once more and then you will meet with our superiors: _who are you_?" The gun clicked to emphasize her question.

"Oh she mad," Gudao heard Jenny mutter.

Gudao himself wasn't very concerned. It was almost funny: guns were supposedly more dangerous, but after everything he had been through, melee weapons got a greater reaction out of him.

"You're not going to shoot," Gudao said flatly. "At least, not at me."

"How would you know?"

"Not because of some mind control like you're thinking. Seriously, stop that. I don't like being accused of that."

"She has a point," 'Jenny' piped up. "How _do _you know?"

"All of you came here to fight a Siren. You especially," he said, indicating Sheffield with a look, "went out of your way to save me, a bystander. At the risk of sounding cheesy, you're good people. So no, I don't believe you'll actually shoot me."

"… If that's what you think," 'Jenny' continued, "there should be no harm in at least telling us your real name, ja? Tell you what, you tell us yours, and I'll tell you mine."

"So you're not actually named Jenny?" Gudao remarked, as deadpan as he could manage. The Ironblood woman gave him an amused look. A few seconds later, Gudao sighed. "Fine, fair enough," he relented. _I'm going to regret this, I know it. _"My name's Ritsuka Fujimaru. Can I go now?"

Jenny glanced at Sheffield for confirmation that he wasn't lying. To her surprise, Sheffield's visible eye narrowed and she lowered her gun.

"… Admiral Hipper-class heavy cruiser, Prinz Eugen," 'Jenny' finally said. "See you around sometime, Herr Fujimaru."

"I hope not," the black-haired man muttered, nodded and walked away.

Sheffield and Eugen watched him walk away for a while.

Once he was out of earshot, Prinz turned to the other ship girl. "Did you notice, despite the heavy rain and the insane dive, he wasn't wet _at all_?"

Sheffield nodded. "Alright, spill," Prinz said. "You clearly knew the name. Who is he?"

"I know very little and what I do know isn't really valid anymore with the Mage Association in ruins," Sheffield cautioned. "It does explain how he knew the Servant whose powers the magus used; apparently he's very compatible with Servants and that knowledge has to come from somewhere."

For a second Prinz stared. "You're doing it again, you know," she eventually said. "You're assuming I know what those terms mean without actually explaining anything."

Sheffield did not quite sigh. She did, however, sharply exhale. "Ironbloods," she muttered. "It matters not. The Directors will know better."

"It's quite impressive how you've said four or five sentences and yet completely failed to answer my question."

Sheffield gave Eugen a dry look. She returned it unflinchingly.

"Fine," Sheffield sighed. "Do you at least know what a Sealing Designation is?"

*~B~*

"Trust humans to muck up something so simple," Observver Alpha muttered, watching a recording of the event. "What part of retreat the moment Azur Lane arrives is so hard to get?"

She shrugged; a very human action, a habit she'd picked up over the years. "I suppose you can blame that Cube for quite literally driving him crazy."

She turned her attention to another screen, showing the Siren the human magus had named Lancer. "I wonder if I should help that lost child," she pondered, then dismissed the thought. "No, no need, she's found somewhere to go."

Observer Alpha sighed. "Not quite a failure I suppose…"

*~B~*

[Sorry, can you repeat that?]

Enterprise blinked. "Um, Sheffield told me to tell you that the name of the man who aided us was Ritsuka Fujimaru."

That was literally everything Sheffield had said. She'd claimed that she wasn't clear on the details herself, that there were others who could explain it better.

Enterprise would have just tried to explain what she did know anyway, but Sheffield wasn't one for vagueness. If she wasn't sure of something she just wouldn't say it.

She had said that 'the Directors would know' and sure enough, they did react.

Enterprise heard a mutter on the other side. [… So that's where he was. I didn't even think to look there…]

"… Ma'am?" Enterprise tried.

[Right, sorry. Okay. Enterprise, are you still on site?]

"I am."

[Good. I want you to stay there for now. If nothing else comes up, I want you to escort Fujimaru to HQ tomorrow morning.]

"Understood. But can I ask something?"

[Go ahead.]

"Who is this Fujimaru? Sheffield didn't explain why he was so important."

[Sorry, but I'd rather explain once I've met him again. All I'll say for now is that if we can secure his aid, it will be invaluable.]

"I can live with that," Enterprise decided.

[Are you sure?]

"Yes, ma'am."

[Look, I know I'm asking a lot –]

"It's fine, really," Enterprise assured her. "I can just take this chance to see my sisters tomorrow."

[Thanks, Enty. Stay safe out there!]

"I'll do my best."

[I'll sic Vestal on you otherwise~!]

Enterprise flinched as if whipped. "R-Roger that," she responded, a bit weakly, then cut the call.

Really, she could never get used to the inventor's rapid mood swings.

_Right, now where was the nearest hotel…?_

*~B~*

Leonardo da Vinci leaned back in her chair and sighed.

She was not cut out for even being a Vice-Director for so long. She'd be much happier tinkering in her workshop.

_Maybe I can foist some of the paperwork on Fujimaru when he's back, _she thought idly.

She couldn't afford to waste too much time, however. Sitting up again, she pressed a few buttons.

She had a call to Azur Lane High Command to make.

*~B~*

**Disclaimer: I do not own Azur Lane or any Nasuverse property.**

**Further disclaimer: I haven't played Azur Lane. Yet.**

**This isn't because of not wanting to play. There isn't enough space on my tab. I literally can't right now. Even if I deleted FGO – which I am not willing to do ever – there wouldn't be enough space. I need to wait until I get a memory card around … some time this month.**

**So until then, my experience with Azur Lane comes from:**

**Slow Ahead, Queen's Orders, Comic Anthology**

**Half the anime and discussion threads for the rest**

**Wiki browsing**

**Months of reddit browsing.**

**So basically, not much. I'm very liable to make mistakes. I will gratefully accept corrections should they need to be made. Even if this one will delve more into the Nasuverse side of things.**

**Why did I write this then? Partly to put down a particularly persistent plot bunny, and partly to get back into writing.**

**To those who are familiar with my other massive fic that hasn't been updated for almost eight months: no I have not abandoned it. I won't say anymore here because it's not the place for it, but expect an update this week or next.**

**As for this fic: tentatively I have decided on a monthly schedule. So Ch2 sometime next month or, if lucky, by the end of this month. This chapter took me a bit over a week to write after all.**

**Anyways, that's that. Oh, and just for reference, the appearances for the ship girls used are:**

**Ayanami's retrofit**

**Sheffield's Cloak & Dagger skin**

**Enterprise and Prinz Eugen's base outfits.**

**Well, we're done for today. So,**

**Punitor567 out. El Psy Congroo.**

**Especially for crossovers, canon is just a guideline.**


	2. Eagle's Nest

**This is the first of two chapters uploaded today.**

_**Chapter Two – The Secret Origin of Ritsuka Fujimaru – Eagle's Nest**_

**[January 3****rd****, 2021]**

The doorbell rang.

Ritsuka Fujimaru paused. He couldn't think of someone who would visit his tiny apartment, especially not this early in the morning.

He thought it over for a second, palmed his phone, went to the door and looked outside.

It was a young woman with long silver hair and gray-blue eyes, wearing a casual off-shoulder white tee and black shorts. A black cap and sunglasses were perched on her head and what seemed to be a yellow jacket was tied around her waist.

She looked vaguely familiar but Ritsuka couldn't place his finger on it.

Shrugging to himself, he opened the door. "Hello?"

"Good morning," the woman replied. "It's nice to meet you properly, Mr. Fujimaru."

The usage of his real name made him frown. "Do I know you?" he asked.

"I don't think so, but maybe you saw me last night."

_Last … oh, right._

"Could I come inside?" the woman requested. "We might draw attention out here."

"Sure," Ritsuka said, stepping aside to let her enter.

The woman took a few steps into the small apartment and paused. "Yeah, I know, I know," Ritsuka sighed. "Looks cheap and empty, right?"

"… Actually, I was going to say it looked … very tidy, but now that you mention it…" the woman seemed to be struggling to find a tactful response.

"It's a dump," he said flatly.

The woman winced. "I … can't disagree…"

Ritsuka snorted. "So, what did you want to talk to me about, miss…?"

"Oh right!" the woman realized, and saluted. It was snappy and formal and made him feel a bit awkward. "Yorktown-class aircraft carrier, Enterprise!" she introduced.

Ritsuka raised an eyebrow. "So the super-famous strongest ship girl of the Eagle Union is standing in my run-down apartment. Neat." He shook his head. "What did you say you wanted to talk about?"

"I've been tasked to escort you to Azur Lane HQ. My superiors want to talk to you," Enterprise informed him.

"That's sooner than I hoped," he admitted. "It's not even half a day since the incident at the docks."

"The Vice-Director said that the sooner they contact you, the better. Apparently you would have gone under the radar again otherwise."

"I would," Ritsuka admitted without shame. "I don't suppose I'm allowed to refuse."

Enterprise shook her head. "No. I don't know why they want to talk to you. I wasn't told."

"I doubt it's just to talk. I don't really want to go."

Enterprise tilted her head. "Why?" she asked, honestly confused. "It's not like I'm taking you to a den of villains. Why are you so against the idea?"

"Personal reasons," he said, but didn't elaborate further.

Enterprise stared for a second and sighed. "The Vice-Director did warn me that you'd react like this," she muttered. "She also told me to tell you this: her name is Leonardo da Vinci and she wants to see you back at Chaldea."

Ritsuka stilled. "Azur Lane is working with a magi-built observatory?" he asked.

"Chaldea is different now. How I'm not at liberty to say, it's still a public secret. The Vice-Director will explain everything in person."

Ritsuka hummed in thought. "Fine, but just to talk."

"Great," Enterprise offered him a smile. "I'll wait outside for you to change."

"Isn't the base in a different state?" he asked as she walked to the door.

"I was given plane tickets," she explained, and walked out, closing the door behind her.

For a few seconds, Ritsuka actually did consider changing his mind and not complying. But that would be rude, and he didn't want to be rude, whatever else people might think of him.

Sighing, he grabbed a better-looking set of clothes.

*~B~*

Enterprise was confused.

She couldn't at all tell why it was that Ritsuka Fujimaru was so wanted by her superiors.

Da Vinci had told her to wait in the area while she talked to High Command. And not ten minutes later, Enterprise received orders from them personally: Ritsuka Fujimaru was designated a VIP and was to be taken to base posthaste.

Naturally, she was curious. All she knew about the man was what Sheffield told her, and the Royal maid had thrown in a lot of unfamiliar terms. Sheffield didn't bother trying to explain, saying that their bosses could explain better.

So all Enterprise knew was that he was a young man with black hair and blue eyes, and was capable of some magecraft.

Meeting him in person, she was even more confused as to his merit.

Ritsuka Fujimaru looked like a man going through the motions. He had unkempt hair that had grown a bit long, and it looked like he didn't much care. He had no facial hair, but judging by the state of his head, Enterprise deduced that it was less because he was clean-shaven, and more because he just didn't have any.

He was fairly tall, and from what little she could tell from his loose shirt, fairly well built. Everything about him looked average, except for the eyes.

For lack of better adjectives, Enterprise would call them dead-fish eyes. They were bright blue, but at the same time sort of dim. Dull and empty. Eyes like that weren't uncommon in her line of work: they spoke of deep-seated PTSD. Like their owners had seen so much and been through so much that they had lost the ability to care about anything.

Despite that, on the plane to their destination, he was fairly cordial. Apparently he had no difficulty making small talk.

Enterprise's alert mind, still trying to evaluate him, noticed that not once did he give away anything about himself, however.

Once the plane landed and they made their way out of the airport, they got into an inconspicuous but expensive black car. It was then that Fujimaru finally asked something that seemed to have been bothering him for a while.

"'Erina Kirk'?"

"Huh? Oh, right," Enterprise realized. "We have a secondary, civilian identity that we go by sometimes. It saves us the hassle of immediately being identified as a ship girl, and helps us avoid attention."

"I'm fairly certain that an attractive young woman in light clothing would make heads turn regardless of her name," he commented dryly.

"Thank you for the compliment," Enterprise graciously accepted. "But I can assure you, it's a great help. If I was identified as a ship girl right away, we would have been swarmed by paparazzi and wouldn't have gotten anywhere in good time."

"Fair enough," Fujimaru said with a shrug. "Still," he continued with a small smirk, "I didn't take you for a Trekkie."

This managed to fluster Enterprise. "W-well, I mean … Enterprise," she protested lamely.

Fujimaru snorted lightly. Looking at his expression made Enterprise think of Hornet.

"_Sis, you nerd," _mind-Hornet playfully teased.

Enterprise corrected herself. No, he didn't look like Hornet. Even when cracking a joke, there was no light in his eyes. Hornet would never have that kind of expression.

Soon, the base came into view. Fujimaru raised an eyebrow at it. "I actually expected your base to be coastal," he remarked. "Or, you know, not land-locked."

"It's not strictly necessary to be near a body of water," Enterprise began. "Most humans don't possess the ability to travel on water like us. Choosing a land-locked area was just a matter of convenience since most important things are not accessible by boat. That said, the NY base is coastal but we don't use it too much these days."

The car drove on past the large gate in a tall barrier and they got a better view of the place.

The place was massive. There was a very large land area that was walled off. The base consisted of multiple smaller buildings and one especially large white structure that was several football fields in width.

Said white structure was a multistory building with a lot of windows. The walls were neatly painted white with some silver portions. From far off, it appeared like dozens of cubic structures stacked together. A satellite dish rotated slowly atop it, and there were several antennae grouped together at one end. The road leading to its main entrance was adorned by tall flagpoles, each bearing flags with the emblems of each nation and their faction respectively. The tallest pole bore a flag with the Azur Lane logo.

There was a large building that looked like a gymnasium to the north. The roof was segmented, like it could be opened up. Just behind it were two artificial lakes, rectangular bodies of clean water. They were like swimming pools but many times larger and much deeper.

To the west of the white building were smaller houses that appeared to be dormitories. Next to them was what looked to be a two-story cafeteria. A narrow bridge-like structure enclosed by glass connected its second floor to the second floor of the white building, held up by intermittent white pillars.

To the east was what appeared to be a miniature town. It included the necessities you would find anywhere. Ritsuka caught a momentary glance of a Starbucks and smiled slightly in amusement. You really could find them anywhere.

The entire area was walled off by a rectangular high iron fence. Barbed wire cables crisscrossed the open space between the vertical iron bars. Topped off by a uniform arrangement of bars and stakes, it looked quite imposing.

"Welcome to Azur Lane High Command, Eagle Union branch. We call it the Eagle's Nest," Enterprise said.

Eventually they reached the main entrance. Enterprise disembarked and Ritsuka followed.

There was, of course, a security check at the entrance. Enterprise showed her ID card and was able to walk in unimpeded, but Ritsuka had to go through the minimal processes.

Enterprise wondered if it was because of his average Joe clothing that made him stand out in a place like this. That said, he walked through the metal detector with no issue. A security guard systematically patted him down while his phone – the only thing he had on him – was inspected.

One guard turned it over in his hand. "I could swear they're not this thick normally," he said curiously.

"Right, my bad. The back has a false cover that opens if you press it, uh … there," Ritsuka explained, indicating it. As he said, the cover popped open, revealing a few bills. A couple hundred dollars, Enterprise estimated from a cursory glance.

The guard raised an eyebrow. "You're an impressively paranoid man," he commented, putting the cover back in place. "Emergency cash?"

"More or less," Ritsuka agreed.

The guard absently nodded and pressed the home screen. The wallpaper, Enterprise made out, was a selfie of Ritsuka and a bespectacled young woman with short pink hair. Both looked much younger than Ritsuka did in the present.

After a moment the guard handed the phone back. Ritsuka nodded his thanks and followed Enterprise through the inner sliding doors. "I didn't think you had a girlfriend," she casually said.

Ritsuka stopped. He glanced down to where his phone was held in his left hand. For a second, Enterprise saw something in his usually empty eyes: anger.

And then, just as suddenly, it passed. "I don't," he said shortly, pocketing the phone.

Silently, Enterprise berated herself for putting her foot in her mouth again. She quietly walked on, an awkward silence beginning to form.

She met eyes with a receptionist, who nodded and returned to her computer, logging in Enterprise's entry. Enterprise glanced at the lobby and paused. She then changed directions, Ritsuka following her.

Two young girls were sleeping on one of the sofas. Both wore their long hair in twintails. The white-haired one, Laffey, was leaning against the shoulder of the blonde, Eldridge. Both were in sitting positions.

Despite herself, Enterprise smiled. "Excuse me for a moment," she said to Ritsuka, before quietly approaching the two.

Crouching in front of them, she carefully outstretched her arms. "You shouldn't be sleeping out here," she chided softly. "You'll hurt your necks."

With the ease of long practice, Enterprise gently picked them up one by one into her arms. "Could you please wait here for a few minutes, Mr. Fujimaru?" Enterprise asked, keeping her voice low so as to not wake the two. "I need to take these two to a proper bed."

"Sure, no problem," he assured her.

Nodding her thanks, Enterprise slowly walked to an elevator.

In her arms, Eldridge stirred. "Warm," she mumbled, and held on tighter.

Enterprise tried hard not to make a sound of adoration.

Unseen by her, Ritsuka watched her leave. "Should've brought insulin," he muttered, taking a seat on a sofa.

*~B~*

"Sorry for the wait."

Ritsuka glanced up from his phone. He saw Enterprise walk up to him and pocketed the phone.

She'd changed her clothes. Instead of the casual look, she now sported a sleeveless white shirt and an open black jacket, a black tie and a naval cap.

Wordlessly, he got up and began to follow her again.

It was quite the long walk, but given the sheer size of the place he hadn't expected much else. They took a private elevator at the end of it and after exiting it they ended up at a hallway with large doors at the end. "That's the one," Enterprise informed him.

Enterprise walked up to it and knocked politely.

"Yes?" said a muffled voice from inside.

Ritsuka frowned slightly. It was a vaguely familiar voice, but it wasn't Da Vinci.

"Enterprise here, I've brought Fujimaru," Enterprise replied.

"Excellent. Come in, please."

Enterprise glanced back to ensure Ritsuka was following. She opened the door and the two of them walked in.

The first thing Ritsuka noticed was the sheer size of the room. It was a very large office with a carpeted floor and fancy wallpaper. A single red carpet stretched in a straight path from the doors to the desk of the office. The walls on one side were covered by many bookshelves, not all of them filled. On both sides were sofas for visitors, three of which had been moved to a rectangular formation in front of the main desk. There was a smaller desk and chairs to its left.

The second thing Ritsuka noticed were the four other women already inside the room. None were Da Vinci but two of them had black hair and blue eyes, much like himself. The one at the desk –

_Ishtar?_

– looked strikingly familiar and had a piercing, soul-searching gaze. Both women looked to be about 30, the one at the desk wearing intricate red clothes and the other wearing a pink flower-patterned kimono.

On one sofa was one of the ship girls he'd met last night. Prinz Eugen lazily raised an opened bottle of wine as a greeting. "Guten morgen, Herr Fujimaru," she drawled, looking somewhat tipsy. Ritsuka replied with a nod.

On the sofa opposite was another that he'd met last night. Sheffield nodded to him, and Ritsuka missed Enterprise's raised eyebrow; most people didn't even get that much from her.

Something else about Sheffield made him blink. _Is that a maid outfit? Huh._

"Leonardo was right, we do look quite alike," the red-clothed woman mused. "Anyway, do sit down. Leonardo – that is, Da Vinci – will be here soon. Chaldea is usually quite busy after all."

"That's fine," Ritsuka waved off. "It's a pretty long way away too. Who are you, by the way?"

"You seriously don't know?" the woman asked with a raised eyebrow.

"I think we found someone who doesn't watch the news, nee-san," the other woman said.

"Well, in any case." The red woman cleared her throat and drew herself up. "Sakura Empire High Commander and member of the Azur Lane World Security Council, Rin Tohsaka. It's nice to meet a fellow countryman of your caliber, Fujimaru-kun. Now then, please take a seat and we can get started."

Ritsuka did as told. Logically he knew that there was probably no danger to face here, but he still kept a hand near his phone out of habit. Enterprise sat down beside Sheffield.

"You've already met Enterprise, Sheffield and Prinz Eugen," Tohsaka continued, indicating the three with nods. "This is my equally talented sister, currently my secretary, Tohsaka Sakura," she introduced.

The kimono-wearing woman, Sakura, bowed politely in a traditional Japanese way.

"I would have had Ayanami here, too," Rin continued, leafing through a small file, "but she's busy back home. Anyways, make yourself comfortable."

There was a small silence. Ritsuka looked around the room. Eventually, the silence got a bit too awkward and he looked at Prinz, who had lifted her bottle to her mouth. "It's morning," he said.

Eugen shrugged. "It's evening somewhere," she replied, taking a slow sip.

Ritsuka shook his head and glanced at Sheffield. "So are you a ninja maid or something?" he asked dryly.

"No. I'm from the Royal Navy, not the Sakura Empire," she flatly replied.

"What she means to say is, she's the Brit equivalent," Prinz remarked.

Sheffield looked at her. If she showed any expression at all, Ritsuka would have imagined disdain. "Must you really drink so early in the day?"

"Like I said, it's evening somewhere."

"Don Fujimura … Hatsuharu Hayasaka … Gudao Tanaka," Rin said suddenly, drawing Ritsuka's attention back to her. "There's even a Tohsaka in there," she continued, sounding amused. "Should I be flattered or offended?"

"Uh … the former?" he said.

For half a second, Rin smiled. And then she looked at him with a perfect poker face. "I'll get right to the point, shall I? Do you know why you're here, Fujimaru-kun?"

"It probably has to do with last night, doesn't it?"

Eugen scoffed. "No points for that answer. We'd like to hear your side of things."

"And we would prefer to do that while sober," Rin interrupted, before fixing Prinz with a look.

Prinz pouted and reluctantly put the bottle down.

"Prinz is right, however. Let's start there," Rin said, regarding him coolly. "I want to hear your side of the incident."

Ritsuka had expected as much and had been readying his story the whole way there.

He recounted an edited version of events. The way he put it, he made it sound like he was a first-generation magecraft user who just happened to be on the scene. With a combination of trickery and luck, he had successfully led the man to his own demise.

Prinz looked like she heavily disagreed with the idea of luck being a major factor, but said nothing. Enterprise frowned, deep in thought. Sheffield gave nothing away.

Neither did Rin. "I see. That does align with what I've heard," she mused, expression unreadable. Sakura glanced at her briefly. "Alright, then, Fujimaru-kun, let me ask you this: do I look like an idiot to you?"

Ritsuka blinked. "What do you…?"

"I know who you are. I know _what _you are. I know as well as you do that there is a lot more to that story than you're saying. So let me reiterate: do you know why you are here?"

"… It's not just to detail my side of things?" he tried.

"Even if you were being upfront with it, you and I both know that's not the only reason."

"It's not?"

Rin didn't say anything, just continuing to stare.

Ritsuka relented. Evidently playing dumb wasn't going to get him anywhere. He sighed. "You want to offer me a leading position here at Azur Lane, don't you?" he asked.

That got reactions. Sheffield narrowed her visible eye, looking him over again, as if some secret about him would suddenly make itself known. Enterprise blurted out a "wait, what?" and Prinz frowned.

"It's pretty obvious," he explained. "As far as the rest of you are concerned, I'm just a magus who happened to be on site to help out. And it's not like I did anything special."

"Besides cleverly maneuvering the enemy into a falling building," Sheffield interrupted.

Ritsuka ignored that. "You sent the Eagle Union's strongest to find and bring me in not twelve hours after you found me, someone who should just be an average magus. Not to mention I know the name Tohsaka. You're an old magus family with considerable pull at the Mage Association – whatever's left of it – which means you no doubt know about my Sealing Designation. Therefore, you wanted to use that to blackmail me into a position here, to find out exactly why I got Sealed in the first place."

"Interesting deduction, but you're not quite right," Rin replied, crossing her arms. "For one thing, your Sealing Designation is effectively void, so I couldn't use it against you even if I wanted to. For another, I'm sure Enterprise has told you about Leonardo – come to think of it, I mentioned her too, so is it wrong for you to assume I know exactly why you were Sealed?"

"I've been told time and again that I shouldn't trust magi at face value."

"I can't blame you for that," Rin agreed. "We're a manipulative sort. You're correct in that we do want to give you a job, but for the wrong reasons."

"Herr Tohsaka," Prinz began. "What this guy did last night might be impressive, but that shouldn't be enough to land him a job at Azur Lane. He could be a super magician for all I know–"

"Magus," Sakura corrected.

Eugen rolled her eyes and continued, "But it doesn't feel right to me to just give a commanding rank to someone with no military experience. I assume."

"Thank you for the vote of confidence," Ritsuka deadpanned. "But she's right," he agreed, looking at Rin. "There's no reason why I should have that job. I don't have any military experience."

"That's certainly true. You have no modern military experience," Rin said.

Prinz narrowed her eyes. "'Modern'?" she muttered.

Ritsuka noticed the phrasing himself. _Wait … does that mean – _

"But no experience at all?" Rin smiled. "I beg to differ, Mr. Savior of Humanity."

Enterprise blinked. Prinz Eugen sat up straight. Sheffield's visible eye widened.

All three turned to stare at Ritsuka.

For a long moment, nobody spoke. Finally Ritsuka sighed. "Doctor Roman–"

"–wasn't responsible for even half of what Chaldea tried to credit him with," Rin dismissed. "I was involved with the cover-up, Fujimaru. I know what really happened."

Ritsuka stayed quiet. He tried to ignore the stares of the three ship girls. He'd thought Sheffield's gaze was searching before – compared to this, it had been merely a pinprick of light in intensity.

"I understand why they did it," Rin continued. "Easier to pin all your achievements on a historical legend than a first generation magus who hadn't even heard of magecraft until he went to Chaldea. Unfortunately the important parts – or, well, the parts that those pompous old men cared about – those got out and hence you were hit with a Sealing Designation."

"Wait, wait, wait, back up," Prinz interrupted, raising her arms. "What's this Savior business?"

"And what's a Sealing Designation?" Enterprise added.

"Does this have to do with the missing year?" Sheffield asked.

"You're right, it does," Rin answered Sheffield. "As for a Sealing Designation, it's a status assigned to magi who are exceptionally talented, exceptionally dangerous or both."

"That's almost as much of a non-answer as what Sheffield said," Prinz snarked. "So does that mean Herr Fujimaru _is _a super magician?"

Ritsuka snorted. "Hardly. I'm dead average."

"Think of it like Interpol's Most Wanted list, but for magi," Sakura added her two cents.

"So what happens when someone is designated for sealing?" Enterprise asked.

"At best they're forcibly taken to the Clock Tower and prohibited from leaving the grounds."

"Clock Tower?" Enterprise repeated, confused.

"And at worst?" Prinz asked instead. "Killed?"

"No," Ritsuka answered. "You only wish you were dead."

"Live experimentation," Rin said bluntly. "They'll do everything _but _kill, so long as they can figure out your secrets."

Enterprise looked ill at that. Even Sheffield looked disturbed – as far as she showed it anyway.

Prinz Eugen nodded. "So … you _are _a super magician!" she said to Ritsuka.

"Please stop saying magician," Ritsuka retorted. "And it only happened due to coincidence."

"Contracting more than one Servant is eye-catching enough," Rin said. "Contracting with however many Chaldea had? Even if you were merely the mediator, the fact that you got so many Heroic Spirits to trust you is enough to attract all sorts of attention. Easier for a magus to believe you had some secret mind control magic than to accept that you were naturally charismatic. Hence, Sealing Designation."

"Servant?" Enterprise repeated.

"Manifestations of Heroic Spirits," Sheffield explained. "Said Heroic Spirits are legends from history and mythology."

"What, like King Arthur?" asked Eugen

"Met her," commented Ritsuka.

Eugen blinked. "Wait, _her_?"

"We're getting off track," Rin interrupted. "Now that we've established that I am fully aware of what you've accomplished, let's return to last night. How exactly did you defeat Atrum?"

"… He was using the powers of Medea of Colchis," Ritsuka explained. "And whatever method he was using was driving him mad, causing him to see me as Jason, someone Medea _really _hated. I exploited that, made sure he was seeing me as Jason, and as a result he wouldn't let a fall off a lighthouse do me in before he could, got a point blank shot for a Gandr and got away as it came down."

"What would you have done if I hadn't listened to you?" Sheffield asked suddenly. "What if I hadn't told Enterprise to destroy the lighthouse? How would you have defeated him then?"

Ritsuka shrugged. "Take him into the water with me, stop holding back, use every trick I knew and hope it was enough. Crazy or not, Medea's powers are incredible."

"… I still don't understand a lot of this magic gibberish you're spouting," Eugen said. "But I understand enough to know that you're extremely reckless."

"Old habits die hard," Ritsuka said.

"I saw the light getting blown up," Enterprise spoke up. "How did that happen?"

"He tried to laser me, and, uh … missed."

"Missed," Rin repeated sarcastically. "A point blank shot."

Enterprise frowned. "I couldn't see very clearly, but I'm sure he wasn't even facing it," she pointed out. "And I doubt he had his back to you."

"He missed because …" Ritsuka was reluctant to explain, but he didn't see another way out of this. "Because I made him miss," he sighed. "I reflected whatever he shot at me, and it blew up the light instead." He reached into his pocket, already having guessed the coming question.

"And how, exactly, did you – your phone?" Rin interrupted herself, bemused. "I've never heard of using a modern device as a Mystic Code."

"Not exactly," Ritsuka said, unlatching the false cover.

*~B~*

"_Ritsuka Fujimaru."_

_Ritsuka paused in the hallway, seeing the man in golden armor waiting._

_It had been a long time since he had been intimidated by the King of Heroes. That said, the number of times Gilgamesh, the arrogant king of Uruk, had said Ritsuka's name could be counted on one hand. Usually it was just 'mongrel'._

"_Yes, Your Majesty?" he politely replied nonetheless._

_For a moment, Gilgamesh said nothing, only favoring Ritsuka with a blank gaze._

"_I do not enjoy small talk, so I will be brief," the king declared more than said. "Ritsuka Fujimaru. Your accomplishments in the seventh singularity, your actions to protect my kingdom. I, the King, have deemed it … adequate."_

_Ritsuka had enough experience with the man that he could make a good guess as to his true thoughts. He also had enough survival instincts not to make any remarks on tsundereness._

"_And therefore, it is only right that you are justly rewarded for your deeds." Saying so, he uncrossed his arms. A small golden portal opened just above an outstretched hand and dropped a small object into it, which Gilgamesh then handed to Ritsuka._

_Ritsuka politely accepted it and looked it over: a small grey plastic card. One side was featureless, the other was covered in tiny cuneiform._

"_Um … what is it?" he asked eventually._

"_Are you familiar with how my Gate of Babylon works?" Gilgamesh began. "I had to unfortunately demand assistance from the witch and the gender-confused inventor, however the result is sufficient. Think of it as a pass to use the Gate."_

"… _Wait, is this a key to your treasury?" Ritsuka asked, wide-eyed._

_For a second, Gilgamesh glared. "Were you anyone else," he finally said, "I would have killed you for daring to make that assumption. But as you are different from the other mongrels, I shall let it pass. No, it is more like a key to your own personal treasury. Of course, it is nowhere near as limitless as mine, for you cannot replicate perfection. It is, however, suited for a person such as yourself."_

"_How do I use it?" Ritsuka asked._

"_As long as it is in direct contact with you, you can open portals like I do," Gilgamesh explained, then paused as said portal appeared in front of Ritsuka and he stared curiously at it. "Like that, yes. Evidently being in proximity to myself has made it easier for you to picture the deed. Unlike my Gate of Babylon, where I can store whatever I wish, yours can only contain items that belong to you, without a shred of doubt."_

"_Isn't that true for you too? You own everything," Ritsuka pointed out._

_Gilgamesh chuckled. "Indeed! It is good to see you learning!"_

"_Is there anything else I should know?"_

"_Nothing with greater mass than yourself can be held within it. And there is an upper limit on the number of objects it can contain. I neither know nor care what that is, so I will leave it to you to discover. Finally, it does not allow you to dematerialize your treasures and return them at will. That has to be done manually."_

"_Got it. Thank you, Gilgamesh. I'll make good use of this," Ritsuka promised._

"_See that you do," Gilgamesh warned. "I will not stand to see my generous gift being wasted. Not that I expect such of you. You are someone I have acknowledged after all – twice over."_

_That was high praise coming from the King of Uruk. Not that he'd ever admit it._

*~B~*

"Incredible," Rin breathed, turning the object over in her hand. "A Mystic Code imitating a Noble Phantasm from the Age of the Gods."

"I understood maybe five of those words," Prinz complained.

"You'd understand more if you'd actually studied magecraft like Sheffield and Saratoga," Rin fired back absently, still examining the object.

"Hmm … nope, still not interested."

At her seat, Enterprise finally shut her jaw. "It was the cover?" she said incredulously. "I thought it was something you'd hidden there yesterday but – it was the cover itself?"

Indeed, the object Rin was admiring was his featureless gray phone cover, the false one that concealed a hidden compartment where he claimed he kept some emergency cash. There was a similarly colored sticker on one side that concealed the cuneiform writing on the plastic card.

"Someone told me once that the best place to hide something is in plain sight," Ritsuka said.

"Interesting … could you demonstrate, perhaps?" Rin asked, handing the cover to Sakura, who walked over and gave it back to Ritsuka.

He waited a second after receiving it and then a rippling golden portal appeared on his left. He held out his left hand and the portal deposited a pen into it.

"Wow," Sakura marveled.

"Was that the golden glow I saw?" Sheffield suddenly asked.

"Yeah," Ritsuka confirmed. "I'd used something I keep in it to protect myself. When I put it back in as I was falling it doubled as probably the most obvious signal I could make."

"What did you use?" Prinz asked. "Is it that pen?" She indicated the object in Ritsuka's hand. "I assume there's a reason you have a seemingly ordinary pen in your video game inventory."

"No, this really is just an ordinary pen," Ritsuka refuted. "The thing I used was a mirror that can reflect some energy attacks. Also … you remember when I said Atrum was seeing me as Jason and I exploited that?"

Rin nodded, silently indicating to him to continue.

"Well, Jason had blond hair. So did Atrum. So I showed him himself and let his fractured mind take care of the rest, ensuring that he'd follow me to kill me himself instead of letting me fall to my death. Gandr and the falling building finished the job."

A small silence followed his explanation. "Risky," Rin said eventually. "Relying on your enemy to react the exact way you wanted them to. That's extremely risky."

"The fact that it worked, though," Sakura countered. "That's very impressive."

"High risk, high reward," Eugen summarized, scrutinizing him with a small smile. "You're insane, you know that?"

"If you're trying to disprove that you know mental manipulation magecraft," Sheffield said, "you're not doing a very good job."

Ritsuka gave her a dirty look. For a moment, Sheffield smirked – a rarity that made Enterprise do a double-take.

"What magecraft _do _you know?" Sakura asked curiously.

"Basic Reinforcement, a strictly inferior variant of Structural Analysis, Gandr and a lot of other small spells, most of them unnamed," he answered.

"Which ones did you use last night?" Sheffield asked. This time there was no suspicious stare; it was the plain curiosity of someone wanting to learn more.

"Well, I already mentioned Gandr," Ritsuka began. "I kept Reinforcement up the whole time, and there was this other spell to turn a small amount of my magical energy into electricity to electrocute them."

"Electrocute? Small?" Prinz repeated disbelievingly.

"About as much as a taser. It wouldn't do jack to any of you."

"Yeah, he's no Eldridge," Enterprise agreed. "I think."

"Hold on," Prinz said, frowning. "That cloak you were wearing. It wasn't just something you hid at the yard, was it? And I definitely wasn't seeing things when I noticed you were dry."

"Yeah, that's another one I keep in here," Ritsuka sighed, putting the false cover back in place.

"How many items do you have in there?" Rin asked.

"A few dozen," he answered. Seeing several eyes widen he added, "Only around ten of them are combat-applicable. Fifteen if you stretch the definition. I'm not exactly going to start taking people down with a pen."

"I could," Prinz helpfully supplied.

"You're a ship girl with several times a human's strength," Ritsuka deadpanned.

She shrugged. "Semantics."

"There is one thing I still don't understand," Enterprise interrupted. "You've demonstrated just how capable you are, and also have a story that we still haven't heard. Knowing all that, why are you so reluctant to officially help us?"

And so the topic returned to the thing Ritsuka was the least willing to discuss. "Personal reasons," he cited again.

"Saving a drowning child, personally apprehending a thief, interfering in and single-handedly stopping a gang war," Rin recited, flipping pages in a file. "That's just a small fraction of it. For someone who claims to be so hesitant, you're quite altruistic, Fujimaru."

"… If I see something happening right in front of me and I can do something about it, I can't ignore it," Ritsuka said.

"If that's the case, why are you so leery? I can see why you used fake names in all these cases," Rin said, indicating the file. "You didn't want the Mage Association to track you down. But with the Clock Tower in ruins and not just yours, but every Sealing Designation rendered invalid, I can't understand why you don't want to come back."

"I'm nowhere near the best person for the job," Ritsuka argued. "You can find someone more qualified."

"Unlikely," Rin coolly refuted. "The Grand Order was an entirely unique journey that you went through. There is quite literally no one else alive who shares your experience."

_No one alive? Yeah, that's definitely true, _Ritsuka thought bitterly. "My experience isn't valid for a military organization," he countered.

"Debatable," Rin said back. "Leonardo speaks highly of your skills and determination as a leader. You've saved the world once, you can do it again."

"I didn't do it alone," he said.

Rin frowned. "Nobody is asking you to do it alone. What is your _real _reason, Fujimaru? Why don't you want to be a part of this?"

Ritsuka said nothing. He glanced around the room, finding everyone silently observing. Prinz Eugen was no longer smiling, staring blankly. Sakura, however, didn't look as searching as everyone else, but curious and a little concerned.

Eventually, Ritsuka sighed and ran a hand over his face. "I've had enough," he said, keeping his eyes lowered. "Big world-ending fights, massive battles with the fate of the whole world at stake, I've had more than enough of those. The Grand Order gave me enough experience with that to last a lifetime, and I want no more of that. I'm tired of it."

No one said a word. Ritsuka didn't look up. He didn't want to see their expressions.

"All those stories romanticizing heroes saving the world, sometimes several times, they keep missing how hard it really is. How much toll it takes on whoever the 'chosen one' is," he continued, a bit bitterly. "I was at the wrong place at the wrong time and as a result I had to do it, not because I was the best one for the job, but because I was the only person left who could do that job.

"Small things, like the ones you have in that file, those are fine. I'll always do something to help in those cases. But big fights with high stakes … I'm done. Once cost me too much. I don't want to go through anything like that ever again."

Ritsuka didn't look up. Anger, understanding, disgust, sympathy. He wanted to see none of that.

"You know," he heard Rin eventually say, "that sounds quite selfish."

"Nee-san," Sakura chided.

"Yeah, it is," Ritsuka agreed. "And what's wrong with that? I saved the world once, I deserve to be a little selfish."

"With great power comes great responsibility," Ritsuka heard Enterprise say. He looked up at her dryly. Enterprise met his gaze coolly.

"I know what you're thinking," she continued. "But regardless of where you've heard that statement, it doesn't make it any less true. If you _can _do something to help the world, if you have power like that, it is your duty to use it."

"Good thing I don't then," Ritsuka retorted. "I'm just another guy you can find anywhere, with the only difference being that I've seen way too much."

"Herr Fujimaru," Prinz Eugen spoke up. He looked up at her to find her looking at him coldly. There was no anger or judgment there. There was nothing. Tonelessly, in a way Ritsuka hadn't heard her speak before, she continued, "You're in a room with three ship girls. We are tools of war. We were built for war, and we've lived through war. We're in the middle of one right now. I don't know how your experience compares to that, but perhaps you shouldn't look down on us by wanting to shy away from what we've all seen."

Ritsuka smiled humorlessly. "I suppose you're right. Sorry about that, didn't mean to say I looked down on any of you. I think the opposite, really. I respect you all for everything you go through, everything you do for the sake of the world. I just don't want to be a part of that, not again."

"Why?" Sheffield asked. "You've made it very clear that not only are you very capable, but also that you care. I cannot understand why someone like that wants to walk away from the same things he is willing and able to do."

"I've just said that. Also, I disagree about qualifications," he said to Rin, who was regarding him like one would a disappointing pet. "I don't know the first thing about ship girls or Sirens."

"Neither did you know anything about Servants or magecraft at the start of the Grand Order," Rin fired back.

"Back then I had no choice. This time I do."

"I'm not so sure about that," Rin refuted. "Someone of your caliber can't afford to look away from a demanding job."

"We know what we're talking about," Sakura added. "Nee-san is a genius among magi, and intelligent enough to handle non-magical jobs as well. Because of her vast qualifications she was forced to take this position."

Rin looked at Sakura, unamused. "Isn't that all me?" she asked.

"I spent _three years _trying to teach you how to use a laptop, nee-san, I deserve some of that credit."

Rin did not quite blush. But she did close her eyes in embarrassment, groaning, "Sakura…"

Ritsuka could tell that Sakura was trying to lighten the mood in her own way. He appreciated the effort, he really did.

"Anyways," Rin collected herself and looked at Ritsuka. "I understand your hesitation, Fujimaru. What you have to understand is that Azur Lane can't afford to let someone like you go. I know you don't like it, but we need you to fight for us. The war against the Sirens looks like a stalemate at first glance, but the truth is that if things stay as they are, humanity will lose. And there won't _be _anyone else to ask."

"If he doesn't want to," Prinz interrupted, "then just let him go. Someone who doesn't want to be here won't be much help."

"That may be the case," Rin agreed. "That said, Leonardo has assured me that if Fujimaru chooses to do something, he gives it his all. Well?" she asked Ritsuka. "Are you going to let Da Vinci down?'

Ritsuka said nothing.

Rin shook her head. "I suppose that's better than a straight rejection. Fine. Wait here for Leonardo. If she cannot convince you to stay, you're free to–"

The computer monitor on her desk beeped frantically, interrupting her. Rin looked at the display and eyes narrowed.

"Sakura, prototype hangar," she commanded.

"I'm on it." Wasting no time, Sakura seemed to effortlessly interpret that non-sequitur and picked up a phone. She began to dial quickly.

"Trouble?" Enterprise asked, all business.

"Siren signals detected, three of them," Rin informed. All three ship girls tensed. Ritsuka, too, was alert. "One of them has the same signature as the one from last night. Enterprise, take two from whoever is available and head to hangar 3."

Enterprise saluted and left the room in a hurry.

"Yes, go straight to the hangar when you arrive. Yes, they'll meet you there," Sakura said over the phone.

"Eugen, Sheffield, you two head straight to the hangar as well," Rin ordered. "Fujimaru … you have two options. You can wait here till they finish dealing with this and then talk to Leonardo, or you can go meet her now and then go with the rest of them. Well? Can you ignore this?"

It was a challenge, and one he couldn't back down from. As much as he was reluctant to get in over his head again, he could never sit still when he could do something to help.

"Unfortunately not," Ritsuka said promptly. "If you're not against it, I'm going."

"That was a quick 180," Prinz remarked suspiciously.

Rin smiled. "Excellent. Sheffield, Prinz, lead him to hangar 3. We'll use this opportunity to field test Leonardo's prototype. Get going."

"Understood. "Jawohl~!"

Ritsuka followed them as they left.

Once they were in the lift again, Prinz spoke up, "Looks like I was wrong about something."

"What's that?" Ritsuka asked.

"I don't like you," she stated bluntly.

Ritsuka accepted that with a shrug. "Fair enough."

"Let's see if Director Da Vinci was right," Sheffield said. "You would give your all to anything? Prove it."

Ritsuka nodded.

The lift doors opened again. "This way," Sheffield said, jogging off.

It was a minute or so before they arrived at large automatic metal doors labelled 03. A plate at the side also said 'Experimental Project Hangar'. It opened to allow them to enter.

It was massive and spacious. The roof looked so high that a eight story house could fit inside. Rods and beams of iron, either a metallic red or gray, formed a complicated framework sectioning the hangar into several partitions.

Jet planes, a couple helicopters, and various other aerial vehicles Ritsuka didn't recognize were parked within. Small vehicles like one would see at an airport – carts that carried a small number of passengers, vehicles with bars at the front for lifting and carrying cargo – and even some tow trucks were among those he saw straight away.

Paths were painted in yellow, makeshift runways that led to large rectangular sections of metal and concrete in the wall, which were painted differently and appeared to be hinged. Ritsuka assumed that they were gates that lifted up to allow entry and exit. There was also a circular section in the roof divided in the middle. It looked like it opened up for helicopters.

"There," Eugen pointed to a part of one runway and Ritsuka followed her finger to a vehicle he had never seen in his life.

It was a black, streamlined contraption. The main body was the size of two vans stacked side to side, and in fact, resembled a van. Windowed doors hinged vertically upwards on either side and it had six wheels, each resembling those of a bus. Large wings extended from either side of the doors, being four in total. The forewings were smaller and there was a small emergency door for the pilot above the left forewing. At the center of each wing were what looked like arc reactors straight out of science-fiction. The glass of the windows were polarized, so he couldn't make out any of the interior details.

Standing near it, watching cables connected to a tow truck being untied from the contraption, were four women.

One of them was Enterprise, who wore a completely serious face that made Ritsuka realize why she was called the Eagle Union's strongest. She was inspecting a large longbow, whose size would make it nigh-impossible for regular people to even lift, let alone pull. Seemingly having completed her inspection, she dematerialized it, letting it dissolve into motes of blue light.

The second looked to be in her early teens. She had light pink hair in short twintails, light amethyst eyes, and wore a fancy outfit that seemed totally impractical for battle – a white-frilled blue dress exposing the midriff, an open white naval officer's coat, black tights and white shoes. Then again, Ritsuka had seen much more bizarre 'battle outfits' so he just assumed it somehow worked. She was animatedly chatting with the third woman.

The third woman had dark pink eyes and hair, with dark gray streaks in her hair that was tied in pigtails. She was tall, one of the tallest women Ritsuka had ever seen. Her blue jacket was also left open, with a lone hot pink strap over her chest keeping it in place. Her clothes consisted of a red-pink bra, a two-tone midriff-exposing 'vest' that did little in the way of modesty, hot pants fashioned from tearing a longer one, deep blue leggings and black-and-red shoes. There was a polarized visor on her head. It was also a very impractical outfit but Ritsuka paid it no mind. He'd seen stranger.

What Ritsuka was attempting not to think about was how … horizontally gifted she was. It wasn't quite to the levels of Rhongomyniad, or even close to Raikou, but she was still among the biggest women he'd ever seen. Her bust was so sizable, in fact, that what passed as a 'vest' ended up looking like a crop top.

_Maybe she hasn't closed the jacket because she _can't, Ritsuka mused. _And is that a belly button piercing?_

The last woman was one Ritsuka recognized easily, and not just because of her (deliberate) resemblance to the Mona Lisa. Even after five years he wasn't liable to forget her. She'd made sure of that, with how larger than life she acted usually, how much like a meddlesome old man she was in his and Mash's lives.

Which, come to think of it, was true.

She had her usual blue-and-brown form-fitting outfit on, the usual bulky golden mechanical gauntlet on one arm. Ritsuka hadn't forgotten the number of times it had launched a rocket punch at misbehaving inventions that were annoying her, or that one time in Jerusalem that she showed off just how much power it packed.

The staff she was carrying was no slouch in the power department. Even the unassuming mechanical bird on her shoulder could put up a fight.

She heard Ritsuka and the others approaching and turned around. For a second she wore that familiar serene smile, the one which was impossible to read her true intentions from.

Then she frowned. "You need a haircut," she said.

Ritsuka rolled his eyes. "Yes, mom."

"You have a son?" the shorter girl asked, whirling around and looking Ritsuka up and down. "I thought Servants couldn't have kids."

"Eh, close enough," Leonardo da Vinci waved off. "Good to see you again, Ritsuka. I can tell you've got a lot of questions, but–"

"–those can wait, yeah," Ritsuka finished. "Nice to see you again, though."

"So … who are you?" the taller woman asked. She turned to face them, and Ritsuka saw more clearly just how revealing her outfit was. The number '130' was printed on one front side of the jacket, and 'BREMERTON' was written along an edge.

"Ritsuka Fujimaru," he said. "I'm an acquaintance of Da Vinci." It was a practiced answer that gave away nothing. He didn't want to go through another interrogation, especially since they were short on time.

"… Wait, that sounds familiar …" the shorter one muttered.

Everyone missed Enterprise's small frown upon seeing him. She raised an eyebrow and turned a questioning glance at Eugen and Sheffield. Eugen shrugged.

"I'd tell you to go into more detail, but we _are _pressed for time," Prinz said, going up to the vehicle.

"She's right, now get in!" Da Vinci ordered.

The seven of them walked up the ramp and into the vehicle.

There were eight seats inside, arranged in threes and ones opposite each other, with an aisle separating them. One end of the aisle led to the back room of the vehicle and another led to a curtained passage that Da Vinci walked through.

Enterprise and the two pinkettes sat together, Prinz and Sheffield opposite them. Ritsuka took one of the single seats.

[Testing, testing, is this thing on?] Da Vinci's voice came from an overhead speaker.

"Yes, D, we can hear your cliché lines just fine," the taller pinkette said.

[They're cliché for a reason. Aaanyways! Welcome, ladies and gentlemen to the maiden flight of the Sky Border Type 0.5! This is your pilot, Da Vinci speaking. Fasten your seatbelts and all that, but more importantly, enjoy the ride!]

"…Shouldn't it be Boarder?" Enterprise asked plaintively.

*~B~*

Lights flashed along the runway. Sirens blared. And at the end of it a rectangular section of the wall slowly hinged upwards, revealing a passage behind it that ascended and slowly spiraled outward.

The engines of the Sky Border started up. It began to move forward, accelerating. It didn't actually need a runway, technically speaking; it could achieve liftoff from a stationary position. But a running start was more dramatic, and naturally, that's why Da Vinci chose it.

The Sky Border accelerated at a tremendous rate. It reached the end of the short runway in mere seconds and sped along the rising tunnel to the outside.

And in less than thirty seconds, the Sky Border roared into open sky, adjusted its trajectory and immediately shot off at many times its previous speed. A shockwave buffeted the ground below it and a receding sonic boom was heard as it bolted into the clouds, disappearing from sight.

*~B~*

**Yes, I made Rin High Commander of Sakura Empire. No, I see nothing wrong with this.**

**This was basically just a massive exposition chapter, I know. Initially, I'd planned to make this chapter and the next just one chapter, but it got a bit out of hand. I'm still posting them together for the feeling of completeness. Next one is around 80% action, which, at the time of writing this, is still in progress, so I can't tell whether it'll be just as big or a bit shorter.**

**I'll not keep you all so I'll end this AN now. Anything I could say should be said by the next one.**

**Punitor567 out. El Psy Congroo.**

**5 of the 7 new girls from Multilayer Medley went straight to my favorites. This was a good event.**


	3. Lake 51

**This is the second of two chapters uploaded today**

_**Chapter Three – Soaring Eagles Searching for Freedom – Lake 51**_

**[January 3****rd****, 2021]**

Ritsuka glanced out the window. He could see nothing but clouds now, and those also seemed to be moving away, so fast the Border was going. And despite the speed, the ride was completely smooth.

"… You've been busy," he remarked.

Da Vinci's snort came over the speaker. [As if something like this would take me five years. For one, I've been swamped with so much paperwork that a new pile appeared out of thin air every time I turned around. For another, this toy here is practically medieval! High Command ordered me to test its flight systems now that they're complete. As if a genius's word isn't reassurance enough.]

"I thought you hated paperwork."

[I do! And even though Goredolf does his job there's just so much of this _merda _that I couldn't tinker nearly enough! You've gotta help me, Ritsuka! I need to be in my workshop more! I'm going through withdrawal!]

"Helping you means becoming a guinea pig for your inventions or a living dress up doll, so no thanks," he deadpanned.

[Boo~!]

"… Dress up doll?" Enterprise repeated. "She wouldn't do that … would she?"

Ritsuka thought about it. "Yeah she would. Unless you're a cute girl. Medea would get first dibs in that case."

"… Are you telling me the infamous Witch of Betrayal had a thing for playing house like a little girl?" Eugen asked.

"There's a lot history books don't cover."

"Are you an old Chaldean or something?" the tall girl asked. "I mean, you and D are chatting away like best friends, and you're bringing up Heroic Spirits like it's common knowledge."

"Now that you mention it … Herr Tohsaka never really answered my question," Prinz mused. "Care to enlighten us, O Venerable Savior of Humanity?"

"Wait, what?!" the tall pinkette exclaimed, staring at Ritsuka.

"You're exaggerating," Ritsuka said. "I was just in the wrong place at the–"

"No, no, no, we're going to need much more detail than that," Prinz interrupted. "You still haven't talked about _why _you have some pocket dimension on the back of your phone full of magic thingamajigs."

Ritsuka took a second to try and figure out how to answer that. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, he didn't have to.

"OH! Now I remember!" the shorter pinkette exclaimed, enthusiastically pointing. "You're the Grand Order hero!"

Ritsuka blinked. "… Wait, how did you know that?"

Da Vinci giggled. [Saratoga there stayed at Chaldea once for a week, and by the end of it, there wasn't a secret left that she didn't know. Heck, even I don't know how she found out some of it.]

"Another grandiose title, hm?" Eugen hummed, thinking. "You know, I'd expect a so-called hero to act more heroic."

"What's the Grand Order?" the tall woman asked.

"A battle to save the world!" the now-identified Saratoga sighed. "It's such a great story! And to think the protagonist of that is sitting right here. Oh, I've _got _to come up with a good prank worthy of you!" she gushed.

"You sound like Reno," the tall one commented, amused.

"What did he do, exactly?" Enterprise asked.

"I pointed fingers," Ritsuka explained shortly.

Da Vinci took over. [Ritsuka Fujimaru there is someone who's saved the world.]

"Yeah, we got that, Director. What did he _do _is the question?" Prinz retorted.

[Let me do proper build up, will you?] Da Vinci fired back, not really annoyed.

"Honestly, it's nothing special," Ritsuka tried.

[Don't try to downplay your role, Ritsuka, you know as well as I do that you were very important, regardless of your combat strength.]

"Stop dodging the question, D," the tall girl interrupted. "Explain, please."

[In July 2015, the world ended,] Da Vinci said. [This isn't hyperbole, this isn't something that only _could _have happened. Without doubt, the world ended. Save for a fraction of Chaldeans, everyone was dead. To turn it back, we had to travel to seven key points in history, fix the singularities caused by some uppity nutjob with a grail, recover the grails, and find and defeat the mastermind who'd incinerated all of humanity in the first place.]

"… Alright, that's a lot grander than what I was expecting," Eugen admitted.

"July 2015," Sheffield muttered. "Vice Director, isn't that…?"

[The start of the missing year? Yep,] Da Vinci confirmed. [There was a time limit. Chaldea had to save the world by December 2016 or we'd be wiped from existence along with everyone else. Ritsuka, humanity's last Master, the only person still alive who was capable of Rayshifting, was the person who saw the whole thing through.]

"Everyone you knew was dead and you had to live with that fact for a year, until you could beat someone strong enough to end the world and finally bring them all back?" the tall woman asked and then winced. "Yikes, that's harsh."

"What do you mean?" Enterprise asked.

"Think about it, Enty. Remember how you felt when … you know … Yorktown?"

Enterprise frowned, but nodded.

"Imagine that, but it's everyone. Literally everyone you ever knew is just gone. Now you're stuck in the middle of strangers, who you don't know or can't really talk to, until you can bring them back."

"You don't know if that's even possible," Ritsuka added. "You tell yourself and everyone around you that yes, you _will _save the world, but how exactly is an ordinary human who's never done anything more challenging than high school kendo supposed to win against someone who can and did end the world?"

"Ow, that's even worse," the pinkette said.

[You still did it, though,] Da Vinci.

"Of course I still did my best, but I'd be an idiot if I didn't have doubts. And my reward for all that? Forced to go undercover if I still wanted to live. I think it's obvious why I don't want to do anything like that again."

"Yeah, if anyone deserves a vacation from all this, it's you," the pinkette agreed, then blinked. "Oh yeah, I haven't introduced myself! I'm Bremerton, a Baltimore-class heavy cruiser! Nice to meet ya!"

Ritsuka blinked. He glanced at her coat again. He couldn't see it from this angle, but … "Is that custom made?" he asked.

Bremerton paused, looked down, then smirked. "Well, sorta."

"I'm Saratoga! Call me Sister Sara, please!" Saratoga introduced. "I'm a carrier like Enty here, but more importantly I'm a magical girl in training! Please take care of me!"

Ritsuka stared. Then he turned to the speaker. "She's not going to–"

[No Install cards or crazy perverted Kaleidosticks involved,] Da Vinci answered, predicting his question. [And while I'm enjoying this little chat, I'm afraid we'll have to cut it short. We're almost there.]

"Already?" Enterprise asked. "That was fast."

[Yep, Lake 51 is in sight. And if you think this is fast, just wait till I complete this baby~!]

Lake 51 was an artificial lake created in the middle of a wildlife resort. It was about a mile wide, and roughly circular. Many rumors had gone around at one point about people seeing strange lights or UFOs near the lake. Of course, those had all been debunked. Even the Sirens hadn't made any regular appearances near it. However, those rumors caused it to be nicknamed Lake 51 after the elusive Area 51 purported to deal with alien research, and the name stuck. To this day, even official maps identified it as Lake 51, whatever name it originally had was forgotten.

Until that day, there had been no Siren detections in that location whatsoever.

[Alright, get ready, ladies and – ah, _merda_.]

"What–" Ritsuka began, and was interrupted as the Sky Border violently swerved.

"D?!" Bremerton exclaimed, startled.

[Tch. Found the first one.]

Outside the window as she spoke, bursts of flak were visible as the Sky Border weaved past them.

And there on the coast of the lake, Ritsuka saw a black warship with glowing red lines. Some of its guns were firing continuous volleys trying to bring the Sky Border down.

[Siren battleship at the coast,] Da Vinci informed. [And a small platoon of twenty armed humans near it. The other two signals are coming from the middle of the lake.]

"Then let's keep going," Prinz said. "We're fast enough, ja?"

[Yes, but we can't just ignore this,] the caster answered, the Sky Border lurching again. [Some of us have to get off here. We still don't know what they're planning here. And for some of you to get off we need to get this thing close and slow down. That's not an option while that battleship is firing at us.]

"We're fast enough to evade the anti-air shots, aren't we?" Saratoga asked.

[Yes, but actually no! This thing can't take the stress of evasive maneuvers at those speeds!]

"Aren't there weapons on this?" Ritsuka asked.

[Not yet! But we don't need them!]

"… Right! D, get us as close as you can!" Bremerton ordered, undoing her seatbelt.

[Right! Got a plan?]

"Something like that. Fujimaru, when I say now, open that door and try not to fall out."

Ritsuka nodded, putting a hand on the door handle. "Got it."

"Sara, can you give me a boost?"

"Leave it to me!" A large metallic staff that looked to be made out of miniaturized ship parts materialized in Saratoga's hands. "Bibidi-babidi-boo!" she declared, waving it at Bremerton, who had stood up.

Pink energy streamed from the staff-head. It shaped itself into a globe around Bremerton. That done, it pulsed, flashing once, then faded into semi-visibility.

Ritsuka stared. "That's … not magecraft, but …" he said slowly.

"I told you, I'm a magical girl! In training," Saratoga said.

[Wisdom Cubes are pretty amazing, huh?] Da Vinci remarked. [As long as you have the power and willpower necessary, you can quite literally do anything.]

"… Okay, but why did you quote Cinderella?" Ritsuka asked.

"Why else? It's fun!" Saratoga cheerfully answered.

[Get ready, I'm just about to get in position!] the caster warned.

"Gotcha! Fujimaru, door!" Bremerton ordered.

Ritsuka complied, unlatching the door and kicking it for good measure. It almost didn't open at first due to the howling wind outside. The altitude combined with the Sky Border's motion meant that Ritsuka was blasted by high-pressure winds. He Reinforced himself just a bit due to that.

[Now!]

Bremerton grinned. "See you on the ground!" she declared, lowering her visor to cover her eyes. Taking a couple large strides, she jumped clear out of the plane.

Ritsuka watched her get smaller as she fell, two large hull-shaped riggings materializing around her.

"Should I…?" he asked, gesturing at the open door.

"No, leave it open," Enterprise said, summoning her bow. She stood up, bracing herself against the door opposite, produced a light arrow and aimed forward.

"She is _definitely _taking after her sister," Eugen mused.

*~B~*

Feeling the wind rushing against her face while falling to terra firma wasn't an experience Bremerton had had before, but she definitely liked it. Not enough to do it again, mind you, but it was certainly an unforgettable experience.

Setting aside the logistics of taking a picture like this, there wasn't a camera in the world that could capture the moment and do it justice.

For a moment, Bremerton wondered why she found this situation so exhilarating. She chalked it up to something about the Baltimore class, then returned her attention to the fight at hand.

"Right, here we go!" She summoned her large rigging.

Her rigging was divided into two parts on either side of her, each shaped like the front half of a ship's hull. She exerted her will and all her turrets took aim, adjusting as she fell.

Shells and flak exploded around her, Saratoga's magic barrier keeping her safe. Sara wasn't good enough to shield the entire Border yet, otherwise Bremerton wouldn't be doing this.

Keeping up her confident grin, her eyes, hidden by the visor, scrutinized the Siren battleship. It wasn't hard to find her targets: all she had to do was look for the guns shooting at her.

Destroying the entire battleship would take too long, so she had choose her specific targets. Having chosen that, her turrets all fired.

The distance and wind threw off her aim, many of her shells missing the mark. But just as many collided with the battleship guns.

Bremerton and the battleship continued to exchange shots as she fell. Bremerton was protected by Saratoga's barrier; the battleship was not.

Soon enough, things exploded on its surface. Bremerton's grin widened in triumph as the shells exploding around her dwindled to nothing.

"Anti-air guns down!" she called. Her report was heard due to the communicator in her ear.

[Copy that!] Da Vinci confirmed. [Enty!]

[Roger!]

Far above Bremerton, an arrow of light shot out of the open door of the Sky Border. It then transformed into a fighter plane and swerved down at speed, until it was flying parallel to her. From the pink contails, Bremerton deduced that Saratoga had enchanted it to be accepted by her barrier. Sure enough, the barrier didn't repel it, allowing Bremerton to grab hold. It then swerved off again.

"Get me closer to ground!" Bremerton said.

[Understood!] Enterprise complied.

The plane began to descend, Bremerton standing atop it.

She only noticed the oddity when a man aimed it at her, just about to fire.

"A missile launcher?!" Bremerton exclaimed. "Where the hell were they hiding that?!"

The missile launcher fired. Bremerton fired her own guns.

The majority of the missiles were shot down by her shells. Bremerton warily eyed the remainder and then the cracking shield that had reached its limit.

Ship girl or not, getting hit by missiles would _hurt_.

"Crap. Dive!" she shouted.

The plane swerved vertically down.

She had made a small miscalculation. While her maneuver would avoid the missiles – they were fortunately straight-shooting – she didn't realize that she was also in range of the battleship.

At the last second, she saw the shot coming. "Oh, shi–"

It collided with the faltering barrier and broke through it. The explosion tore the plane and Bremerton was bodily flung a distance away.

She landed in a burst of dirt and mud. Both the battleship and the armed men peppered the location with bullets, shells and more.

Shells were fired from within the dust cloud, an unaimed volley meant to at least protect from some of the assault. Flak burst, scattering the armored humans. It was a wonder they weren't even seriously injured. It spoke of how well their armor was made.

The dust cloud dissipated, revealing a disheveled and pissed-off Bremerton. She tossed her broken visor aside. The strap holding her coat in place was torn as well so she shrugged it off.

"That is the last time I try to imitate Baltimore," she muttered, firing another volley at the battleship. Bremerton looked down at herself and scrunched her nose. "Ew."

*~B~*

"Bremerton!" Saratoga called.

[Don't worry, she's landed fine,] Da Vinci assured. [Sheffy, you're up!]

"Understood. Enterprise," she called, striding and jumping out of the Sky Border without hesitation.

"I've got you!" Enterprise said, releasing another arrow. It morphed into a different plane, one that was faster, and swooped below Sheffield, who nimbly landed on it.

Like she was surfing in the air, Sheffield balanced atop the plane. She summoned her rigging and began firing full force at the platoon below. The guns below the plane wings added to the assault.

Several of them went down immediately from the direct hits. The light cruiser kept firing as the plane descended. On the ground below her, a distance to the right, Bremerton added her two cents, the two sided attack keeping the enemies busy.

The Siren battleship was no slouch. It fired relentlessly at Sheffield. The light cruiser hastily muttered directions and Enterprise deftly maneuvered the plane according to them.

Bizarrely, the rain of bullets didn't abate at all. A glance led Sheffield to widen her eyes. The men she was sure she'd already killed got back to their feet. They seemed to ignore their obvious mortal wounds and kept their triggers squeezed.

"Oh, great," she heard Bremerton say. "B-movie zombies."

Once she had reached safe distance, Sheffield ordered, "Turn 90 degrees left and bomb everything." She jumped off the moment the plane swerved toward the battleship, dropping its whole payload. Sheffield heard the telltale sounds of more planes joining in for a powerful airstrike. Sheffield landed with a short roll, got to her feet and began firing again.

All things considered, it was going well, Sheffield wondered, dodging out the way of a hail of bullets. Despite that, she wondered why she was getting a bad feeling about the operation.

Humans working with Sirens was nothing new. Just last night, when they had first met Fujimaru, they had brought down an operation by the so-called Real Heroes. The captured men hadn't yet divulged anything, Sheffield was told. High Command had yet to order Da Vinci to look at the crystal tubes, but from hearing the reports, she'd deduced that it was some sort of energy harvest, be it through Siren technology, magecraft, or even both.

The question was, what were they doing here, anyway? This was a land-locked, artificial lake. It was an easy guess that the Sirens had portaled into it, but why? And what did the purported Real Heroes, or so Sheffield assumed they were, have to do with it?

Sheffield couldn't help but feel as though she was missing an important piece of the puzzle. That was nothing new, really. They could never really figure out what the Sirens wanted.

Another piece then showed itself, quite abruptly. Sheffield's senses shouted an alarm and she dodged aside an attack that ruptured the earth. Geysers of dirt went up.

"Hey!" Bremerton shouted. "You better not get that shit near me!"

Sheffield focused on their attacker.

It was a woman with long grey hair in a ponytail. She wore an expensive white shirt, black skirt and black tights. And more importantly, she held a very long sword in her right hand. The blade was segmented, attached on a grey backbone that appeared elastic.

"Useless," she clicked her tongue. "Get outta here."

She snapped her fingers and the twenty soldiers collapsed like puppets with their strings cut. Shimmering black mist emanated and dissipated from their bodies.

_Some sort of necromancy? _Sheffield wondered. _No, they were already dead. Their corpses were just being moved._

"Hey, D? Trouble," Bremerton said. "There's a magus here."

"Worse," Sheffield corrected, eying the whip-sword. It had a presence, a sense of power that was different but eerily reminiscent of Atrum's staff. "I suspect she is using a Servant's powers, like the magus from last night."

*~B~*

[Copy that,] Da Vinci said. [Ritsuka, get over here!]

Ritsuka obliged without hesitation and made for the cockpit. "What do you need?" he asked.

Da Vinci was sitting on the pilot's seat. And was it just his imagination or were the controls very simple? There were far fewer buttons and levers than he'd think.

"I'm going to go deal with the wannabe Servant," Da Vinci said. "I need you to fly in the meantime."

"… Wait, what? Wait a sec! I've never flown before!" Ritsuka protested.

"Oh, don't worry! It'll be just like riding a chiropter. It's really intuitive!" Da Vinci dismissed his concerns, taking off her headset.

"Yeah, for you!"

"Pish-tish."

[Just one question, Da Vinci,] Prinz Eugen's voice came from the headset. [Do you trust Herr Fujimaru?]

Da Vinci paused, raising a perfect eyebrow. "Wow, what'd you say to her?" she asked Ritsuka.

"Just my usual."

"Your 'usual' makes people really like you."

"That was years ago."

Da Vinci shrugged. "Still is. You just need to remember again." She brought the headset up again. "To answer your question, Prinz: yes. With my life. Anything else?"

[… No, nothing.]

"Alright, then." Da Vinci stood up, pulled into her previous seat, materialized her staff and pushed open the emergency door. "It's just like a video game!" she said over the rush of wind. "Just use that steering wheel to change direction and that stick to change altitude! Don't worry, I'll walk you through the rest!"

"While you're fighting?" Ritsuka said incredulously.

"I'm a genius, Ritsuka! Of course I can multitask!"

With that, she jumped out of the window. As she fell, Da Vinci raised her staff and her mechanical bird grabbed the top. Bizarrely, it was able to hold her weight and safely fly her to ground.

For a moment, Ritsuka stared. "I'll have you know, that makes no sense," he eventually said. He then shut the emergency door.

[Herr Fujimaru, we need to get to the middle of the lake,] Prinz urged.

"Right. Hold on!"

Da Vinci rattled off instructions and he followed them to the letter. He would grudgingly admit that Da Vinci was right. The controls _were _really intuitive.

Ritsuka entertained an idle thought that maybe the Sky Border had been designed with him in mind as well.

They sped over the lake, away from the fighting at the coast. Eventually, the other two Sirens came into sight.

One was a mass-produced model, a black ship with glowing red lines similar to the battleship at the coast, except this one seemed to be an aircraft carrier. The flight deck had a runway marked on it with red lights.

And standing on it was a humanoid female.

Yellow eyes, white hair, sleeveless green form-fitting vest. No doubt, it was the same Siren whose creation he'd seen the previous night.

[Oh, it really is that one,] Prinz remarked. [_Gut_. I've been wanting a rematch.]

[Hold on, I'll go first,] Saratoga said. There were noises like the propellers of several miniature planes which flew out. Ritsuka spotted them as they exited through the open door of the plane and flew towards the Siren Demi-Servant.

The Siren – Lancer, Ritsuka recalled – seemed to not notice at first. She stood unmoving in the middle of the flight deck, head tilted upwards.

_What…?_

He couldn't clearly see her face from this distance. "Is there some sort of magnifying option?" he asked. Da Vinci told him what to press and an image appeared on the screen.

Lancer was resolutely staring up. Ritsuka quickly followed her gaze, but saw nothing.

… _Wait, is she…?_

His train of thought was cut when Lancer moved. She saw the planes coming but showed no surprise. The red spear appeared in her right hand and she leapt to the edge of the flight deck, spinning it. Only a moment later, the planes fired their guns. From the pink bullet trails, Ritsuka assumed that they were enchanted somehow. Reinforcement, maybe?

Whatever the case, Lancer successfully blocked it. At the same time, spectral red shapes appeared at the rear end of the flight deck. They zoomed forwards, solidifying as they moved, and launched off the carrier as ten red-and-black jet planes flying in pairs. They swerved, scattering into a random formation, and flew toward the Border.

Saratoga's planes turned around to pursue them but a sudden barrage of missiles obliterated them. Following their disappearing contrails, Ritsuka saw that her previous shoulder-mounted machine gun had been replaced by a miniaturized missile launcher.

That was all he saw before having to turn the Sky Border around and fly off, pursued by the Siren aircraft.

[Oh, great, she upgraded,] Eugen groused.

[We have bigger problems,] Enterprise reminded. [Prinz, Sara, disembark.]

[Aye, aye, captain!] [Jawohl~!]

[I'll take care of the planes,] Enterprise continued. [Fujimaru, don't stop.]

"Wasn't planning on it!" he fired back, pushing the Sky Border to go faster.

*~B~*

Once Prinz and Saratoga jumped off Enterprise took a deep breath and walked to the open door. She kicked it and it broke off the hinges. She took her hat off and tucked it behind a seat, and then fixed her coat on properly.

"Mr. Fujimaru," Enterprise began suddenly. "I'd like to apologize."

[For what?]

"I was being quite rude to you. That was unbecoming of me."

[Nah, forget it,] he quickly dismissed. [No need to apologize, it's not like you said anything wrong. And besides, Prinz was the one being confrontational, not you.]

"Still," Enterprise insisted. "On her behalf as well. Prinz would die before she said sorry."

A light snort came over the speaker. [I figured as much. But really, neither of you said anything wrong. And in any case, there's more important things to do,] he reminded.

Enterprise nodded. "Right."

Producing a light arrow, Enterprise closed her eyes. She concentrated on her hearing, listening to the sound of the Siren planes in pursuit. She slowly visualized a model of their flight paths.

Enterprise waited.

_Just about … now!_

Enterprise jumped and there was nothing below her.

She twisted her body to the left as gravity took hold and released her arrow.

The plane it struck didn't immediately explode. The golden energy of her arrow arced wildly and connected with three other planes from within the first and then all four burst and careened down in trails of smoke.

Enterprise spared just a glance to the result of her attack, immediately drawing and firing another arrow into the blue void. This one turned into a plane which swerved around and sped to just below her. Enterprise neatly landed and immediately got to her feet. She'd taken down four planes in one fell swoop but there were still six to go.

As a carrier, Enterprise carried no guns, anti-air or otherwise. A carrier was supposed to fight from a distance by launching planes, but with Enterprise's willingness to jump headfirst into the frontlines, she had to improvise. Luckily she had her bow, and she eventually learned how to fight without planes.

Projecting another arrow, Enterprise eyed a pair of planes which had swerved to a side to evade. She nocked the arrow and waited a moment. Even though she stood on top of a speeding plane, her footing remained stable.

The moment passed and she loosed the arrow. It drilled through both consecutively. Both went down, smoking.

Three of the remainder were bearing down on her. Enterprise crouched down, taking her right hand off the bowstring to hold on to her plane as she willed it to make a sharp turn.

Several seconds passed as high speed aerial tag. Enterprise flew wildly, making sharp turns every now and then to avoid the Siren planes' laser barrage. Once she was flying in a straight path again, Enterprise slowly took her hand off the plane, drawing her bowstring and producing another arrow.

A second later Enterprise jumped straight up just as her plane swerved down.

Twisting herself downward, she released her arrow. It struck the middle of the pursuing fleet just as it passed below. The light arrow burst on impact, shards and sparks flying in every direction, taking down the other two as well.

"_Grr … so you can do trick arrows, fine! Hawkeye still does it better!"_

Enterprise would fervently deny having been struck by a flare of competitiveness upon seeing Reno showing off the trick arrow set she'd personally made. She would also deny scouring the very same comics for ideas.

_Right, nine down, _Enterprise thought, nocking another arrow. Her plane was circling back to arrest her fall –

The tenth and final Siren plane, with a burst of speed, crashed into it. Both went down, destroyed.

Enterprise clicked her tongue, but she didn't panic yet. She wasn't planning on falling, and even if she did, with the lake below her she would be mostly unharmed.

She heard jet noises approaching. Turning as she fell, she spotted a second fleet of ten Siren planes approaching.

No time to waste, she loosed the arrow. Immediately she generated a new one and fired, repeating this several times in rapid succession.

Her aim was a bit off considering the moving targets. Some of the planes dodged, some attacks she missed, but that was as planned.

Three of them went down, struck by light arrows. The rest reached closer, the laser guns just about to fire.

Gunfire from behind shot them down.

Enterprise had set all of her arrows to turn into planes. The ones that hit, of course, exploded prematurely, but the ones that missed were able to do so, turning into the fastest fighters Enterprise carried. Around half of them swerved around, and attacked the Siren planes from behind.

Still falling upside down, Enterprise trained her sight onto the Siren carrier. She began to draw back the bowstring.

Black-and-red shapes materialized as the carrier prepared to launch more planes.

And suddenly the flight deck was lit up with numerous explosions, shredding the runway and disabling the carrier.

The other half of Enterprise's missed-arrows-turned-planes had gone for the carrier. Once it looked like it was about to launch another group of planes, Enterprise's fighters all dropped their entire payload on the carrier, forestalling all further launch attempts by destroying the flight deck.

It would only buy her time. Siren ships did not conform to the restrictions of man-made ships. No doubt it had missiles or lasers or something.

Enterprise would not let it do anything like that.

_I'll finish this in one shot!_

She drew back the bowstring.

Focusing all of her concentration on her Wisdom Cube, Enterprise began to siphon out energy. Unlike last night she didn't stop at just a powerful but stable arrow. This time she poured in everything she could.

Golden energy crackled violently in her hand, forming an unstable arrow that sparked and shot out small arcs incessantly. The light of the arrow intensified further and further as she continued to fall.

As expected the Siren 'carrier' began firing lasers from a hidden backup cannon, bringing down the majority of Enterprise's surviving planes. Sparing as little of her concentration as she could, she willed all of them to fly back to her. The 'carrier' fired a laser straight at her and she defended herself by having one of her planes in the way.

It gave her just a second to shoot but it was enough.

"It's over!"

Enterprise let the arrow fly.

It sparked violently, so unstable it was. It actually gave up the ghost and exploded just before it struck the ship. But the explosion was mighty enough to do the job.

A burst of blinding light went up, as if a lightning bolt struck the surface of the lake. A huge geyser of water rose to cover the ship, and when it splashed down it was clearly visible that the large vessel had been torn in half.

Enterprise's sole surviving plane came under her at the last second. She collapsed onto it, tired, and nearly fell off. She struggled to move her tired limbs and looked back.

The two halves of the carrier were sinking into the water. Her job was done.

*~B~*

There was a loud sound as the aircraft carrier was destroyed in one powerful shot. It wasn't important to Lancer.

What was important was that she continued to dodge.

Lancer was constantly on the move, trying to avoid attacks from several directions at once. The pink-haired individual, designated Adversary Unit 03, had sent several planes to pursue Lancer. In any other situation, Lancer would have the option of shooting down the planes.

That option was unavailable due to the second attacker. A ship girl with grey hair. Lancer had designated her Adversary Unit 01 as she was the first enemy Lancer had come across. 01 was hovering in the air, precisely bombarding Lancer's location with shells. This forced Lancer to constantly stay on the move.

There was one more form of attack.

"Sara Shot!"

A bolt of pink energy blasted out of the head of 03's staff, heading straight for Lancer. Lancer slashed at it with the red spear and it dissipated like mist.

The anti-magic properties of the red spear was a discovery Lancer had made around two hours ago when her new command unit had attempted to tie her up with a cursed rope. It was a reflexive action, one that, in hindsight, should not have been done. Lancer's new Master was unstable in a different way from her first command unit. Displeasing this Master would mean ter–

Error.

Lancer's thought processes ground to a halt. She came to a stop for just a moment as an attempt was made to restart.

It was a moment too long.

01's shots landed true, blasting Lancer back. Water erupted from the spot in a tall geyser and more followed, giving Lancer no time to recover.

"Come on, is that all you got?!" 01 taunted.

"Negative," Lancer answered blandly. She canceled the water walk and submerged.

"Hm? Prinz, didn't you say she wasn't a conversationalist?" 03's voice was heard.

"Who cares? Maybe her new command unit or whatever she wants to call it is more agreeable and she's in a good mood or something," 01 said.

That was a negative as well, but Lancer wasn't trying to give her position away so she stayed quiet.

Momentarily Lancer wondered why she bothered thinking about replying but that was irrelevant so she let the thought go.

Under the water Lancer's vision worked just as well. She could make out 03's silhouette.

Lancer activated the water walk again. Underwater, this caused a repulsion between her feet and the water, propelling Lancer forward. Lancer zipped under 03, brought her legs back under her, and was poised to leap at 03 from behind.

"Sara Shot!"

Pink energy coalesced at the bottom of 01's staff and blasted backwards at Lancer. Lancer didn't react fast enough and was blown back.

Slowly getting back up, Lancer ran a self-diagnosis. Evaluating the damage, she scanned her two opponents.

Neither looked worse off. Lancer was losing.

It was incomprehensible. Lancer had come out well from a two-on-one fight not twelve hours ago. What was the cause for her struggling now?

It was incomprehensible. She should be doing better. Failure meant ter–

Error.

Once again, her mental processes crashed and she had to effectively reboot herself. The regeneration of her clothing stopped for a moment before resuming.

"Huh?" 01 uttered.

"What is it?" 03 asked.

"For some reason, it's … not exactly weaker, but not doing as well as last night," 01 said.

"Yeah, I was wondering how something this weak held you back."

Weak? That was incorrect. Physically, none of its attributes had declined.

But in that case, what was it?

Was Lancer so bothered by the possibility of term–

Error.

Lancer shook her head as if to clear it. She did not understand where that habit had come from.

Perhaps thinking about something else would be better.

"Query," she said.

Reflexively, 01 and 03 made to attack. They paused upon seeing Lancer not moving at all.

"Reason for vocalization?" she asked.

There was silence for exactly 4.89 seconds.

"… Pardon?" 03 eventually asked.

"Observation indicates that vocalizing the attack's given name has no effect on its efficacy," Lancer elaborated. "Reason for such vocalization is therefore unclear."

There was silence for a further 3.68 seconds.

"There … isn't a reason?" 03 eventually answered. "It just … sounds cool?"

Interpretation failure. Lancer tilted her head. "Meaning unclear," she said. "Query: definition of 'cool'?"

"… Prinz, why do I feel like I'm trying to explain things to a little kid?" 03 asked 01.

"She _was _created yesterday, so I suppose that explains it. But this is weird. She was nowhere near this curious before–"

01 activated her shielding function without pause and blocked the sudden missile assault from Lancer.

"Sneaky," 01 remarked, just a hint of approval in her carefree voice.

Lancer paused. Since when did she know what carefree sounded like?

"Distraction and trickery. You're actually being cunning like the average Siren now. That's very different from last night when you were fighting directly and just wouldn't stop for anything. Yet here you are, stopping for a small chat," 01 remarked. "Well, if you're willing to talk, tell me, Siren: what are you doing here?"

"Unspeakable," Lancer replied. "The command unit cannot be betrayed."

01 shrugged. "Worth a shot."

Without any further warning, she fired. Lancer leapt to the right to dodge.

She jumped right into the path of falling bombs from 03's airplanes. The explosion knocked her towards 03.

"Sara Bind!"

Circular bands of pink energy materialized and constricted around her. Lancer struggled to move. If she could just touch the blade of the red spear to them –

"Too easy!" 03 chided. "Sara could read you super easily! Well, I can't blame you, you're clearly in turmoil over something … actually, no, I can. You're a Siren after all. We exist to kill you."

Kill … ? Did that mean term–

Error.

Lancer once more attempted to reboot.

"I'm guessing you were meant to be a blank slate," 03 deduced. "But since you're a Demi-Servant, whichever Servant you're bonded to has started influencing you, filling up that blank slate. In that case … answer this. Why are you fighting us?" 03 asked.

"The command unit has designated all ship girls as enemies," Lancer answered. "This unit is a tool designed for combat, to obey commands."

"Tied up like that, you're not doing a very good job of that," 01 commented.

"Hush, Prinz, I'm interrogating," 03 chided. "Look, Siren – do you have a name?"

"This unit has been designated Lancer."

"Okay, Lancer, I get that your boss has ordered you to fight, but why are _you _fighting?"

"… Personal reasons are unnecessary," Lancer answered after 1.42 seconds.

"Oh, but it _is _bothering you, isn't it? Hey, Prinz, look at that: we found a Siren with a conscience!"

"Is that important? This Lancer or whatever isn't going to just stop fighting us. It has orders."

"Affirmative," Lancer agreed. "This unit is duty-bound to serve the command unit."

"Is that so? Well, guess I've got no choice," 03 said, dramatically sighing. "I feel like I'm bullying a baby, but you _are _growing. Evolving. And at this rate, you'll be plenty dangerous even later today, provided you get over whatever your issues are. Ugh, we should've brought Bremmy," 03 grumbled.

"True, this is right in that wannabe shrink's ballpark," 01 agreed.

"You could stand to be a little less rude, Prinz," 03 complained. "Well, whatever. Gotta take you out now. Get ready, Lancer; I'm going to befriend you."

…

… Error. Interpretation failure.

"… Clarify?" Lancer asked.

Adversary Unit 03 clarified. Non-verbally and quite painfully.

03 raised her staff high. Pink energy coalesced at its head, a density that completely overshadowed the previous attacks. It grew bright enough that were this night, it would have lit up the vicinity as if it were daytime.

It was dangerous. Lancer could not allow herself to be hit by it. She redoubled her struggle to break free. The bands began to crack. She had time. It was taking a while to charge. If Lancer could just get out of the bindings …

Unfortunately for Lancer, it was too late. "Sister Sara Superstar Strike!" 03 shouted, and swung the staff down.

There was a sound like a large thunderclap. The waters parted beneath the falling hammer that was 03's attack. Pink-tinged white light burst upwards in a geyser almost equal to what Enterprise had just produced.

It felt like a landslide had fallen right on top of Lancer. There was an impact of such a scale that Lancer couldn't quantify it.

Perhaps that was because of the pain. There was so much pain, Lancer couldn't think clearly. The impact was momentary, but everything else felt like it would go on forever.

The thunderous explosion continued to ring in Lancer's ears. Her nerves were alight with signals, transmitting that everything hurt. A lot. Her clothes were half-torn with charred patches, smoke coming off them.

Lancer could feel her consciousness wavering. She could see her vision darkening.

_Is this … ter … mination?_

The thought brought with it a sense of immense alarm, but it was not enough.

Lancer blacked out.

*~B~*

Prinz Eugen hovered lower to let a completely exhausted Saratoga lean against her rigging for support. "Whew!" Saratoga panted. "I'm so glad she didn't break out in time!"

"… What is with you Eagles and exhausting yourself in one ridiculous attack?" Eugen asked rhetorically.

"I had the chance and I took it! It was too good to pass up. Besides, that was supposed to kill her, not…" Saratoga trailed off. She stared a distance away from them, to where Lancer lay on her back on the water, unconscious. After a second, her eyes narrowed. "You ever seen a Siren go unconscious before?" she asked, getting back up.

"You noticed, huh?" Eugen said, eyes never leaving the prone Siren. She aimed her cannons and first shot just over Lancer. The shells landed in the water beyond her in loud bursts. "Try anything, and that'll be you," she warned loudly.

There was no response.

Carefully, Saratoga walked up to the defeated Siren and crouched down. She made sure Prinz could still clearly see Lancer from her angle and cautiously put a hand to the Siren's neck.

"Well, she's al – wait. Huh?"

"What?" Prinz asked.

"… Until now, all the Sirens we've met have been androids, right?"

"What about it?"

"This one's fully organic."

"… And she talked like the most robotic of all," Eugen muttered. "Let's take her back with us, and have Da Vinci look at her. We might make a breakthrough."

"Roger that."

*~B~*

In hindsight, perhaps starting the fight with a rocket punch was not the best idea, but it wasn't as though that mattered.

While still in the process of flying down, Leonardo Da Vinci aimed her armored gauntlet at the magus and the fist blasted out at high speed.

The magus woman sharply cracked the rope like sword. With a sound like a whip crack, it slammed into the rocketing fist and sent it careening towards the lake.

Now Da Vinci had several options. She was a genius, after all. A single magus wielding Servant powers was not going to be any trouble.

For the moment, she decided to play along.

The magus flicked her wrist and the whip sword. It zapped through the air far faster than either its dimensions or the speed of the flick would suggest. Da Vinci blocked it with her staff, curiously noting the strength behind it.

Homing blue lasers then shot from the head of her staff. Quick as a flash, the magus' sword retracted as she made it spiral in front of her to defend.

"… Oh, now I remember!" Da Vinci finally realized. "That's Astolfo's sword!"

"Oh? So you've met whoever it is?" the magus commented.

"Sure have! A shame, though," Da Vinci sighed. "I'd have loved to meet him again. You're nowhere near as cute as he was."

"Is that so?" the magus smiled. It wasn't a nice smile. "Sounds like just my type. Pity, I'll have to make do with that maid over there later. We're going to have _fun_," she said, licking her lips. "You and the big one can go die. You're not my type."

"Firstly, I am insulted! You did not just pass over my perfect body!" Da Vinci exclaimed. "Secondly, ew. Astolfo definitely wasn't anything like you."

"My name is Celenike Icecolle. You best remember that all the way to the Throne, Servant. Now that I think about it, I can always have you as an appetizer after you're dead … hmm, no, that won't work. If I kill you, you'll just disappear. I'll need you alive."

"Oookay, let's just go back to passing over my perfect body, shall we? I don't need a BDSM psycho lusting over me," Da Vinci said.

All throughout that conversation, the fight hadn't abated in the slightest. Blue lasers blasted from her staff like machine gun fire, sometimes swooping in from odd angles. Celenike slashed at them with her whip-sword, it moving in a blur of speed to deflect most of them. Grazing shots apparently didn't do much damage despite each individual laser being quite powerful. Da Vinci theorized that that was probably due to Astolfo's Magic Resistance.

Celenike grinned. This was going easily, she thought. Da Vinci was using repetitive attacks that, while not easy to defend against, weren't very difficult either. Once she dealt with her, she could get rid of the bigger ship girl, incapacitate the maid, and have a good time. "Heh. Surely, this isn't all you can do, is it?" Celenike taunted.

"Who knows?" Da Vinci said dismissively. "But should you really be worrying about that?"

Celenike's grin slipped. "What?"

Da Vinci smiled. It radiated smugness. "On your left~!" she sang.

Celenike whirled around just in time to block Da Vinci's mechanical fist flying back with a sharp swing of her sword.

And completely missed the mechanical bird swooping in from her right that bowled her over and slashed out her right eye.

Celenike howled. She snapped her hand wildly at Da Vinci. The caster blocked it with the mechanical hand – now back in place on her arm, and easily caught it, holding the whip-sword in place. Something clicked, and a jet of sub-zero gas blasted out, instantly freezing the sword. Ice rapidly travelled up its length, reaching for Celenike.

The magus quickly let go of the weapon and scrambled back. "You … YOU!" she screamed.

"The proper form of address is 'you genius, you'," Da Vinci admonished. She aimed the glowing staff head at Celenike. "Now then; are you willing to answer my questions or do I have to play the guessing game?"

"Fuck off!"

"Guessing game it is. Well, at least there's _something _fun in all this," the caster absently grumbled.

There was a series of quick explosions in the background. Da Vinci spared a glance to see the wrecked Siren warship beginning to sink. "Good job, girls!" the caster called. "Take five!"

Both Sheffield and Bremerton were too careful to take a break just then. Sheffield methodically checked the corpses Celenike had been moving with magic. Bremerton continued to shoot volley after volley at the ship, making sure that it was well and truly destroyed.

"So, Celenike Icecolle, age irrelevant. What were you doing at Lake 51?" Da Vinci asked, not really expecting an answer. "No, don't bother refusing to answer. I can guess. You've got Siren escorts with you and you're obviously not a Siren, which means you're here to help them with something. Question of the day is what?"

Of course, Celenike didn't give anything away.

"My acquaintances here are telling me all about you," Da Vinci said, tapping an ear. It was true; from the moment Celenike divulged her name, people back at Chaldea had looked her up. It was laughably easy. "And _wow_, you're an idiot," Da Vinci continued. "You did everything short of putting a neon sign over your head saying 'look at me, I'm with the Real Heroes now!' At least you had some brain cells seeing that you didn't give your location away."

Da Vinci paused to listen to the rest. She hummed in thought, moving her staff as if scanning her. "Hmm … what happened to that Wisdom Cube you were using? I can detect it all over you but I'm not seeing it. Don't answer that! I like puzzles!"

She tossed the staff to a higher grip. The glow diminished. "Now then, back to the main topic: given that it's the Sirens that we're talking about, I'm guessing they wanted you to test a weapon. Since you didn't use it on us, that means you don't have it and it's somewhere else around here. Our sensors would have picked it up if it was above water, which means it was in the lake. Most likely somewhere near where the other two Sirens were detected."

Da Vinci smiled at Celenike's expression. "That about sum it up? We've been dealing with Sirens for a while now, we know how they work. Mostly."

The caster nodded. "Thank you for your assistance, Signora Icecolle. Sweet dreams!"

With that, Da Vinci stepped forward and before Celenike could react, rapped the staff onto her head. Hard. Celenike went down immediately.

It wouldn't have mattered to her if Celenike died, to be completely honest. But the fact that she was using a Wisdom Cube for a pseudo Install was a mystery, and Da Vinci could not leave a mystery unsolved. She welcomed intellectual challenges.

Which is why everything else about this incident was a disappointment.

[You look bored,] Sheffield said.

"That's because I am," Da Vinci replied. "Honestly I didn't even need to come down here. The two of you would have been plenty."

[Was it a weak Servant or somethin'?] Bremerton asked. In the distance, Da Vinci saw her dematerialize her rigging.

"Or something," Da Vinci confirmed. "Astolfo was a bit zany but he was very competent. Signora Icecolle on the other hand was a complete rookie. I don't know how she did it – yet – but looks like she only Installed a small part of the Servant unlike Atrum last night who carelessly took in all. That stopped her from going mad – well, more mad than she already was – but she didn't practice at all with what she did take. Sheesh, this whole fight was a drag."

Da Vinci heard a sound like a muffled jet engine and glanced. "Oh, they're back," she observed, watching the Sky Border return.

The aircraft slowed as it approached the coast. Da Vinci instructed Ritsuka on the landing and it did so smoothly.

One of the doors was gone to her curiosity. It wasn't that hard of a battle, was it? Prinz, Saratoga and Enterprise disembarked, and Da Vinci's eyebrow rose when she saw what Prinz held in the jaws of her rigging.

"Why'd you bring her back?" Da Vinci asked curiously.

"Despite appearances, this one's body is organic," Prinz remarked with the air of someone talking about the weather. "We were going to ask you to look at her."

Saratoga called over Bremerton and began relaying her guesses about the Siren's psyche.

Da Vinci stared at the downed Siren. _It's unusual alright, I've never seen or heard of a Siren losing consciousness._

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ritsuka exit the plane. He glanced at the Siren before asking, "What now?"

"Now, we wait," she replied, looking out at the lake. "They had something in the lake for some reason. A weapon or something, I don't know."

"Then shouldn't we go back and find it?"

"No, no need," Da Vinci said absently, setting her staff to scanning mode again and holding it above the Siren. "Who'd you say was put in this girl, again?"

"Irish Lancer Diarmuid."

"That could be why," Saratoga spoke up thoughtfully. "Diarmuid was a pretty good guy, right?"

"That's an understatement," Ritsuka deadpanned.

"And Lancer is basically a day old homunculus, so it makes sense that his morals are seeping into her. Any ideas on why she kept freezing up, Bremmy?" Saratoga asked.

"Nope, sorry, I haven't even met her, so I can't say," Bremerton answered.

"More importantly, why don't we need to depart?" Sheffield asked.

"Hmm? Oh, because I already sent someone. That and none of you are subs," Da Vinci answered.

Ritsuka blinked. "… What? When did you–?"

"Oh, she's back," Da Vinci commented. The others followed her gaze.

A lone figure was walking out of the water and towards the coast. The woman had black hair with a white streak tied in a side-tail, and red eyes. She wore a black leotard with a zipper down the middle that was open to expose some cleavage. Her mouth was covered by a scarf with teeth patterns.

Under her left arm she carried a cylindrical metal contraption about as big as a beachball. It was a mess of non-uniform plates and cables, with a screen the size of a smartphone.

"Package received," she said blandly, as she walked up.

"Good job!" Da Vinci praised. "Knew I could count on you."

"Whatever," the woman brushed off. "Can we go home now?"

"When, exactly, did you get over here?" Prinz asked.

"A short while ago, I lost track," the woman answered, looking at Ritsuka with slight curiosity. "Who's this?"

"Someone who claims to be a hero."

"Everyone else does. _I _don't," Ritsuka retorted.

"_Everyone_, hmm? You've sure got a high opinion of yourself," Prinz fired back without pause.

Ritsuka shook his head. "Ritsuka Fujimaru. Acquaintance of Da Vinci," he introduced.

"U-47," the woman said shortly. She put down the device on the ground in their midst.

"Also known as the best submarine ship girl in the world," Da Vinci added. "Sure, the others are no slouches, but Shiina here is on another level."

"Don't call me Shiina," U-47 said in a resigned tone that indicated that this wasn't even close to the first time she'd said that; nor would it be the last.

"How did she get here?" Enterprise asked.

"Rayshift," she explained. When she saw Ritsuka blink, she elaborated, "Well, we call it that, but it's a bit different. Closer to long-distance teleportation than anything. I used this little guy," Da Vinci indicated the mechanical bird on her shoulder, which raised a wing in greeting, "as a beacon to lock onto. Sent it over the lake and Shiina got Rayshifted from Chaldea to here, using those coordinates. Well, it's only a one-way thing, so we only use it for urgent matters."

"… Anyone can do that now?" he asked.

"Sadly not! We still need people with high enough compatibility to do it. So it's still you, me and all the ship girls, plus a few others you haven't met yet."

"Wait, hold on," Bremerton interrupted, "So you'd already figured out what was going on even before you jumped into the fray?"

"Genius," Da Vinci reminded, before fixing her attention on the cylindrical device. "Now then, what do we have here?"

She waved her glowing staff over it again. "Hmm … Ritsuka, what do you see?"

Ritsuka took a moment to figure out what she meant, then muttered something under his breath. He then looked at the device and immediately winced, looking away. "Too many colors," he said. "Way too many colors. I don't know what most of them are. And it's ridiculously bright; about as much as say one of the ship girls here."

"Enty or the others?" Da Vinci asked.

"I'd rather not find out; I prefer not being blind, thanks."

"… What?" Enterprise asked, totally confused.

"Is this about what you mentioned back at the Nest?" Sheffield asked. "As inferior version of Structural Analysis, was it?"

Ritsuka looked a bit surprised that she'd remembered. "Yeah, actually."

"Why would looking at Enty make you go blind?" Bremerton curiously asked.

Before Ritsuka could answer, Eugen interrupted in an amused tone. "There's only one way to interpret that. So she's your type, then? Flatterer."

"Were that the case, I'd go blind looking at any of you," Ritsuka fired back easily. He didn't notice the coughs and the embarrassed aside glances from some of the ship girls, or Eugen's highly amused grin.

Da Vinci smirked. _Look at that, he's still got it._

Ritsuka just looked straight at the device. "What's your take on this, Da Vinci?"

"Well, I did assume it was a weapon, and I don't see a reason to assume otherwise," Da Vinci pondered. "My best guess? It's a bomb."

Instinctively, everyone other than Da Vinci took a couple of quick steps back.

"I think they were planning to test it in the lake. Probably remote-controlled from the looks of it."

"What kind of payload are we talking?" Enterprise asked urgently.

"Considering that it was at the bottom of this lake? Big."

"… You just made me carry an armed explosive through half a mile of water," U-47 deadpanned. She didn't sound amused.

Da Vinci waved off her concerns. "Already handling it, don't worry. I set up a Bounded Field around it that doesn't let electromagnetic waves of any kind enter."

"I don't see it," Prinz said dubiously. "I didn't see you doing any hocus-pocus either. And what's a Bounded Field again?"

"In this case, just think of it as an invisible barrier," Saratoga explained.

"… Come to think of it, if it's blocking all EM radiation, how come we can see it?" Sheffield asked.

"Magecraft is weird," Da Vinci offered an 'explanation'.

"You can say _that _again," Eugen muttered.

"Why?" Ritsuka asked. Da Vinci looked to see him frowning.

"Why it's still visible? Well, in layman's terms–"

"No, not that. Why was it at the bottom of a lake? And if it's remote-controlled, why wasn't it set off sooner? They could have triggered it even before we arrived. So why wait? It doesn't make any sense."

"Of course it does! Just not common sense!"

The new voice made everyone wheel around.

There, just in front of the trees was a girl with pale skin, yellow eyes and long blue hair in a ponytail. "Hi-hi!" she greeted cheerfully.

"Siren Purifier!" Saratoga said.

"Oh, it seems my reputation precedes me! Hehe, I always wanted to say that! Anyway–"

BOOM!

One moment she was casually standing there, the next she was engulfed in cannonfire and explosions. Da Vinci also blasted a laser from her staff several times more potent than she used on Celenike.

"Tch!" Enterprise clicked her tongue when her yellow energy petered out between her fingers and an arrow failed to form.

"Rule number one of fighting Sirens," Da Vinci explained to Ritsuka. "Shoot first, ask questions later."

"Or not at all, cause the average Siren sure as hell won't answer," Eugen added. She shot a couple of torpedoes at Purifier's location for good measure.

When the smoke cleared enough for visibility, the Siren was nowhere in sight. Despite that, her voice echoed from all around them. "Now that was rude!" she huffed. "Haven't you heard that talking is a free action?"

"Everyone, form a circle," Da Vinci ordered. "Make sure she can't sneak up on us from any direction."

"Roger." "Understood." "Ja."

"Ritsuka, pick up the bomb and start moving toward the plane. The rest of you, keep formation around him." Ritsuka wordlessly obliged.

"We're running away?" Eugen asked.

"If you want to put it that way Prinz, yes."

"So! As I was saying," Purifier's voice continued. "According to Tessy, that doohickey is _supposed _to be strong enough to vaporize the whole lake. But _just _blowing up a lake is boring! So since she gave me free rein with it, I decided to have fun."

"Why does that sound very not fun for us?" Ritsuka muttered.

"And by fun, I mean … this."

Nothing happened.

"… Ugh, I got the timing wrong. I mean, _this_," she repeated hurriedly.

Nothing happened.

"Oh, for the love of–"

The device beeped.

All eyes turned to it. The screen was lit. For a moment, '60.00' was visible, and then the number began decreasing.

"As if your 'hocus-pocus' is gonna stop us. Have fun now!" Purifier said.

"Shit," someone uttered.

"Don't panic, I can–"

Whatever Da Vinci was going to say was cut short as Ritsuka _acted_.

His Magic Circuits hummed to life, Reinforcing his entire frame. At the highest speed he could move, he jumped more than ran to the Sky Border.

Carrying the device with him, he vanished into the cockpit and a second later, the plane lifted off. It took off vertically, accelerating like a rocket into the sky with a roar.

"Did he just–"

"What the–"

"_Figlio di puttana_," Da Vinci cursed her breath. "His recklessness hasn't changed a bit." Putting a hand to her ear, she called, "Ritsuka! There's a parachute below the pilot's seat!"

He didn't reply but Da Vinci was sure he heard it, even if he'd not put on the headset.

"D?" Bremerton asked, staring up. "Is he seriously planning what I think he is?"

"Probably," she agreed, following her gaze. The Sky Border had ascended far enough that it was almost invisible.

"That's suicide!" Enterprise exclaimed.

"Probably," Da Vinci repeated, this time distinctly annoyed.

"I would estimate that he has to ascend at least two kilometers to be safe," Sheffield said.

"Safe for the rest of us, but what about him?" Eugen asked. "Isn't there an auto-pilot system?"

"Not yet," Da Vinci said in a clipped voice. "The best he can do is make the plane keep ascending without his input for a short while."

"Does he know that?" U-47 asked.

"He should, from the piloting he did today."

In her mind's eye, Da Vinci imagined what was probably going on. Ritsuka sitting in the pilot's seat, pushing the Sky Border to its limits. He kept an eye on the bomb timer all the while.

For a second, Da Vinci wondered if he was actually trying to kill himself. After everything he'd been through, it unfortunately made sense. She wondered if someone like Ereshkigal had laid a claim on his soul.

Despite that, Da Vinci refused to believe he had no attachment to the world of the living. She still had faith in him.

Da Vinci counted down. She waited.

She was both a Servant and a genius, so her countdown was flawless. Just as she mentally hit zero, it happened.

There was no sound, given the distance. At least at first. Eventually, a sound like deep rumbling washed over them.

But before that, there was the visible explosion. It looked very large even from this distance. A nova of blinding red, yellow and white that kept spreading and spreading.

And with its illumination, Da Vinci was the first to make out a dotted silhouette.

She let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding and watched as the dot slowly grew. A few seconds later she was hit by a surge of panic.

_Don't tell me he jumped out without the–!_

A moment later a rectangular white square many times larger than the silhouette appeared behind it. Finally, Da Vinci managed to relax for real.

"… He is insane," Prinz Eugen said slowly. "He is _actually _insane."

"Oh no, he's perfectly sane," Da Vinci refuted. "He just has a habit of frequently giving people heart attacks."

"I think he's got a bit of a martyr complex," Bremerton suggested.

"Unfortunately, I can't disagree."

"Trouble!" Saratoga called urgently.

Ritsuka hadn't gotten clear in time. The aftershocks of the powerful reached just far enough to touch his parachute.

It caught fire.

"That's not good," U-47 remarked.

"Prinz!" Da Vinci barked.

Without a word, Prinz Eugen crouched and then took off.

*~B~*

The only thing Ritsuka could think at that moment was _Ah, shit._

He thought he'd timed it well enough. Putting on the backpack, flying the plane to a reasonable height and then jumping out in around 30 seconds was a tall order. He couldn't jump too early or too late.

It all seemed to be going well for a few seconds. The worst of the colossal explosion seemed to have passed by the time he ejected his parachute. It was an extremely harrowing experience, but at least he would live.

And then the parachute caught fire, and suddenly there was nothing to arrest his fall. The ground was far below. Far, _far _below him, and he was caught in freefall with no options left.

Truthfully Ritsuka had no issue with dying. He was tired and done. Death would be a release. He'd wondered if he felt this bad after only five years he couldn't even begin to imagine what Scathach had gone through.

However, even though he had no problem with an ending, that didn't mean he wouldn't try his damnedest to avoid it.

_If I Reinforce my body to its absolute limits, and have my arms and legs take the brunt of the impact, I'll be forever crippled, but maybe, just maybe, I can stay alive!_

Ritsuka was forced to close his eyes due to the wind.

_Guh…! Doctor, Mash, I guess I'm on my way…!_

He didn't dare try to think about the inevitable abrupt ending to his journey through the sky. Even if he'd accepted it, even if he knew there was an afterlife – and he'd already been there more than once! – it was still absolutely terrifying. His heart was hammering like bass speakers at max volume right next to his ears.

Therefore, he could be forgiven for reflexively yelling when he felt a collision.

That was odd. He didn't think he was even halfway down, was he?

"Oof! Wow, that felt like running into a wall!"

The ground wasn't supposed to be this soft.

And most importantly, he was still conscious? How?

Ritsuka cracked his eyes open. Strange. The ground was still far below him, yet he felt no wind rushing against his face. He heard mechanical sounds, a couple of snaps, and the pull of the parachute on his upper body abruptly vanished. Also…

"This doesn't feel like the ground," he said, with a calm he didn't quite feel.

The same voice from before huffed. "Of course not. I'd be highly offended if you compared my perfect body to hard, flat ground. I'm not Hipper."

Ritsuka turned his head to the right.

Prinz Eugen smirked at him. "Nice weather we're having, isn't it?" she said airily. "The sky is blue and clear, the sun is shining bright, not to mention decently attractive men falling from the sky."

"Thanks. I think. Didn't know you could fly."

"Ironblood science is the best in the world," she said with a perfect straight face.

Ritsuka _looked _at her.

After a second, Eugen snorted. "Reverse-engineered Siren tech. Still a work in progress; only me and my flat schwester can fly as of now."

"Cool. Thanks for catching me, though. I was sure I was a goner."

"You're very welcome. Oh, but that's not what you really want to thank me for, is it?"

"What do you mean?"

Eugen smirked. It was a familiar smirk. It reminded him of Shuten. "Enjoy the landing, Herr Fujimaru?" she teased.

Ritsuka paused, pretending to think, but mostly giving himself time to calm down after that near death experience. "I've had better," he eventually said.

That startled a laugh from the Ironblood cruiser. It grew to the point where she was visibly shaking, her grip on Ritsuka tightening. "You – you just – not only did you not deny it, but …!" she managed to get out between breaths. "Ahahaha! Do you know how rare that is?"

"Nero and Mata Hari corrupted me," Ritsuka said.

"Hah! Okay, okay, I'm done. For now," she said. Her smile had morphed from a hollow sly smirk to a genuine grin. She shifted her grip. "I'm going to descend rather fast now. Hold on tight. Ah, but do be mindful of where your hands are going."

"You don't need to tell me that. Your rigging glaring at me says enough," he retorted, watching the metal creatures intently staring at his hands.

"Aw, they're just protective. Hmm, but are you saying you _would _do something if they weren't around?"

"There'd be something entirely different stopping me then."

"Oh?"

"My personal sense of integrity."

Prinz Eugen snickered some more. Ritsuka felt the rush of wind and realized they had begun descending quickly again.

The silence that followed was by no means an uncomfortable one. It was strangely companionable.

"By the way," Eugen said after a while, "by Nero, did you mean the Roman Emperor?"

"Empress," Ritsuka corrected. He didn't have to turn to know that Eugen was shooting a disbelieving look at him. "Yeah, yeah, I know. Real history is a lot more entertaining than the recorded one. Turns out Nero was a short girl with a very high opinion of herself. Couldn't sing worth a damn, though."

"Hmm. Any more historical genderbends I should know about?"

"We'd be here all day if I started."

"Oh, that's not so bad. I can think of less interesting people to share an intimate embrace with." Ritsuka wondered if she was actually incapable of not making teasing remarks.

"There's certainly better places to do so than falling through the sky."

"Hehe." Her honest giggle was quite endearing. "Oh, and I believe you now. About being a hero and all that. There's certainly not many people crazy enough to jump off an exploding plane while over a mile in the air."

"Thanks. I think."

"Don't thank me just yet. You still have to deal with Da Vinci once we're grounded. I've never seen her so mad before."

"… You know, on second thought, thanks for the save, but you can just drop me now."

"I think not. I really want to see her yell at you."

"Should've guessed you had a sadistic streak."

"Careful what you say to your savior, Herr Held," Eugen lightly reprimanded. "I might actually let go."

"But that's exactly what I want."

"Really? Okay, try this."

Eugen let go.

Ritsuka, however wasn't too fazed as he saw they had descended all the way. Time had a funny way of passing quickly when you weren't paying attention. He let go as well, fell a few feet, and promptly collapsed onto his back. He took a long, slow breath, as he finally registered what he had done and how close he had come to ending it all.

"You are an idiot," Da Vinci snapped. "_Cazzo idiota_."

_Swearing at me in Italian? Okay, yeah, she _is _pissed._

"I've been an idiot since Orleans," Ritsuka shrugged as best he could while lying on the ground. "What else is new?"

"I can think of at least six different ways we could have solved that issue _without _you attempting a grand suicide."

"Old habits die hard," he said for the second time that morning.

It was true. Ritsuka Fujimaru was loath to step into this world again. He thought he truly wanted to live out the rest of his days in boring peace.

He should've known better. From the very first time in the past five years when he'd acted without thinking to save someone, he should've known that he couldn't just leave that part of him behind.

The undeniable fact was: he missed this. He missed the rush, the thrill that came with the adventure. He'd forgotten how good it felt to thwart a scheme that would've cost someone their life.

Maybe that wasn't a good mindset to have. Maybe he really was an adrenaline junkie that just couldn't get over the high. Still, facts were facts. For better or for worse, that was the kind of person Ritsuka Fujimaru had become.

_EMIYA would want to stab me right now_, he mused wryly.

"Did it even occur to you that I could've just defused it and prevented this whole mess to begin with?" Da Vinci demanded.

Ritsuka sighed. "Can we save the lecture for after I'm back at Chaldea?"

That made Da Vinci pause and blink. Anger evaporating, she smiled. "So you _are _coming back?"

"What? Didn't you – and everyone else for that matter – already assume I was gonna say yes?"

"Assuming something happens and it actually happening are two different things," she retorted. "It'll be good to have you back. Chaldea's just not the same without the forty-eighth Master candidate."

"So…" Bremerton spoke up. "What now?"

"Good question," Da Vinci replied. "We would have taken the Sky Border back by now, but _someone _saw fit to blow up our ride."

"There was no–"

"If you say something like 'there was no other option', then so help me, I will shove an Uomo Universale down your throat," Da Vinci interrupted Ritsuka menacingly.

Wisely, Ritsuka shut up.

"Luckily I called ahead, so our backup ride is on its way. What're you girls planning to do?"

"I'll go back to Chaldea with you," Enterprise said. "I've got an appointment."

"I'll stick around the Nest. I promised Cooper a tennis match," Bremerton supplied.

"Me too," Saratoga chimed in. "Big sis Lex demanded I spend time with her today."

"I shall return to the Royal Navy," Sheffield added. "Her Majesty will want a report of these recent incidents."

"I think I'll take this one to Eisenherz," Eugen said, poking the unconscious Siren with a foot. "It's the best place to lock her up; you can't get any more secure than that. After that, well…"

She trailed off. Ritsuka curiously turned to look and found her staring at him.

Slowly, she smirked. "I think I'll come hang out in Chaldea as well. I am _very _interested in all the stories you no doubt have."

"I'll take her back then," U-47 offered. "You go enjoy your chat."

"Make sure Roon doesn't see a still-alive Siren inside the base," Eugen advised.

U-47 scoffed. "Please. I can sneak around. I'm more worried about what U-81 was up to while I was away. She better not have messed up my room…"

"Say hi to Z35 and 36 for me!" Saratoga added. U-47 shrugged.

Ritsuka heard a sound like a camera shutter. He glanced in that direction to see Bremerton pointing a smartphone at me.

"Don't worry, it's just a picture!" she reassured. "I'm not gonna upload it anywhere; I just wanna have something to show Balti."

Ritsuka shrugged as best he could.

*~B~*

"Ohh, that's interesting," Purifier said to herself, watching the proceedings. "Not many humans are crazy enough to do that. This guy looks fun!"

She idly stretched. "So, who should I go to with this first?" she wondered. "I know I'll have to tell Tessy … oh yeah, Observer would prolly wanna know. Maybe this is the same guy who killed that Hallway guy to death. Or, whatever his name was. Atrium?"

Having decided her course of action, she waved the screen off. "Oh, yeah, they took that experiment with them," she remembered, then shrugged. "Meh. Should be fine."

*~B~*

The ride back to the Nest was mostly uneventful. A small aircraft arrived to pick them up within half an hour, and soon enough they were all headed back.

Lancer was kept in a specially secured compartment used for carrying prisoners. U-47 wasn't one for conversation, so she volunteered to keep watch. Celenike was kept in a similarly secured compartment.

The plane ride passed companionably. Prinz Eugen had all but demanded anecdotes about the historical figures he'd met. He didn't think himself a very good storyteller, but he did his best.

One thing Ritsuka made sure off was to mention Mash as little as possible. He wasn't ready to talk about her with people he'd only met less than a day ago.

Enterprise and Bremerton also curiously asked questions from time to time. Sheffield was more interested in the various types of magecraft he'd seen. Da Vinci joined in from time to time, 'helpfully' offering corrections that made him seem more ridiculous.

As for Saratoga, she was enthusiastic enough to begin with, but the moment he mentioned Elizabeth's 'idol thing', it was like a switch had been flipped. Suddenly she was almost right in his face, ordering him to spill every little detail that he remembered about her.

Sheffield dryly remarked that perhaps they should get _their _Queen Elizabeth involved in the idol business, to which Saratoga happily offered to be a mentor.

Arriving at the nest, they immediately parted ways. U-47 silently dragged Lancer off, Sheffield going with her. Celenike was handed to men at the base with a word of caution on containing her. Saratoga and Bremerton also hurried off, leaving the remaining four to make their report to Tohsaka.

Curiously, after they went over Ritsuka's part in dealing with the bomb, she rubbed her temples, looking as though she had a headache, muttering, "Not another one."

She then spent ten minutes calmly but severely lecturing Ritsuka on the waste of valuable military resources and disregard for his own life.

It was several minutes later that they were free to go. Da Vinci promised a detailed description of the events, and that she'd handle all the necessary talking and filing. Finally, she led the other three to a pure white door that led to an equally white room.

It wasn't a very large room. There were computers lining the walls to either side, and five grey cubicles up front. Ritsuka did a double take when he noted the similarities between said cubicles and Chaldea's Rayshift Coffins.

"Get in, I'll explain later," Da Vinci instructed.

Ritsuka obliged. He had the distinct feeling that Da Vinci was not going to be tolerating any shit from him today.

*~B~*

A few minutes later, a featureless ash-grey door slid open in Chaldea, Antarctica. Four people walked through. The sole male stayed quiet, looking around as if trying to convince himself of what he was seeing.

Eventually, they passed a window. Ritsuka Fujimaru stopped, looking out at the raging blizzard.

"So," he finally said, "Rayshift terminals."

"That's right," Da Vinci nodded. "I first got the idea back during the Axis War. After it ended and everyone was ready to cooperate, I went up to the newly formed ALWSC with the plan. People who know about magecraft understand it for what it is, while people who don't just think it's reverse-engineered Siren tech that allows teleportation. They greenlit the project and we set up a whole network, with Chaldea as the central hub connecting to all the bases."

"Is that why there are magi in High Command?" he asked.

"Well, not exactly. People with good intelligence, leadership and planning skills were wanted for the positions. Also wanted – out of necessity – were people who are very knowledgeable about magecraft. And finally, they had to have a high Rayshift compatibility so they could use the network we set up between the bases. High Command just happened to find magi who fulfilled all those requirements."

"Isn't Rayshifting really expensive? Even if you're not blasting someone back in time, you're transferring the body too, this time around."

"Not a problem," Da Vinci dismissed. "Chaldea had all these mana generators lying around collecting dust, so we redistributed them. Since we can't summon Servants, there was no reason to keep them here."

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Prinz Eugen turn to Enterprise. "Did you get all that?"

Enterprise shook her head. "I'm as lost as you are."

Ritsuka missed the byplay because something else caught his attention. "'Can't'?" he repeated, confused. "What do you mean?"

"I'll explain that later," Da Vinci said. "For now, I think you should go rest in your room. I'm sure you still remember the way–"

"GREY GHOST FIGHT ME!"

"Oh, there's your appointment, Enty," Da Vinci smoothly continued.

Ritsuka turned towards the voice. It was a woman with long brown hair in a ponytail, wearing a red one-piece dress and a black-patterned white coat over it. Her eyes shone with eagerness, her left hand gripping the hilt of a katana.

Enterprise sighed. "Hello to you too, Zuikaku," she said, though she failed to conceal a slight upturn of her lips.

"I've been waiting for this!" she said, and Ritsuka marveled at how an indoor voice could pack so much enthusiasm despite staying at a level volume. "Today's the day I win!"

"You realize you've said that every day, and you haven't won yet."

Zuikaku frowned. "Grr, don't rub it in, damn you! Just you watch, I'll make you eat those words!" she promised.

"… She's not your illegitimate son, is she?" Ritsuka asked.

For a few seconds, everyone was silent. "… What?" Enterprise finally managed.

Da Vinci snorted. "Relax, Zui is much more stable and saner than Mordred was," she said.

Ritsuka nodded. "Good to know, but that doesn't answer my question."

"Nope. Probably," Da Vinci answered.

"What do you mean 'probably'?!" Enterprise yelped.

"Who're you, by the way?" Zuikaku asked.

"I'll fill you in later," Da Vinci answered for him. "You two go have fun now."

"Right, thanks! Grey Ghost, we're doing close combat today! Training ground 1, I'll race you there!"

Just as abruptly as she'd arrived, Zuikaku ran off.

Ritsuka blinked. "Like a whirlwind," he eventually said.

"I swear, she only gets more determined day by day," Prinz commented.

Enterprise sighed. "I'll see you two later. If you'll excuse me, Vice-Director."

Da Vinci waved it off. "Sure thing. Go have fun!"

"There's that at least," Enterprise muttered, jogging off after Zuikaku.

Once she was out of sight, Ritsuka voiced, "Grey Ghost?"

"It's a nickname USS Enterprise had back during World War II," Eugen explained. "When you seemingly come back from the dead not once, but twice, you tend to get infamous."

Ritsuka hummed. "I should brush up on my history," he mused.

"Anyway, as I was saying," Da Vinci began, "Go take a breather for now. I'll call you once I've talked to Goredolf."

"Sure. See you in a bit," Ritsuka said, walking off. Prinz Eugen followed without a word.

"So, do you plan on sleeping?" she asked. "Want me to join you in that case?"

"Nah, I'm just gonna lie down for a bit." Ritsuka gave her an aside glance. "How bothered would you be if I said yes?"

"Mm. Quite. Despite appearances, I happen to be quite innocent, you see."

"Color me shocked," he deadpanned.

"Okay, seriously, how are you so unfazed by teasing?" Eugen asked curiously.

"I had to learn how if I wanted to survive men and women of legend jokingly making passes at me."

"Are you sure it was jokingly?" she asked lightly.

"For the sake of my sanity, I refuse to entertain that possibility," Ritsuka deadpanned. "Besides ..." he trailed off.

"Besides?"

"... Never mind."

Eugen didn't push. "I don't suppose you were even halfway done on the way back," she changed the topic.

"Probably not."

"Say, do you drink?" she suddenly asked.

Ritsuka paused mid-step. "... I'm not opposed to it," he said carefully.

Eugen grinned. "Wanna join me in the bar?"

"... it's still morning."

Eugen shrugged. "Like I said before, it's evening somewhere."

"... You and Drake would have gotten along swimmingly," he commented. And despite all common sense telling him otherwise, Ritsuka decided, "Sure, why not? I could use a drink or two after that fiasco."

"We'll see about 'a drink or two'," Eugen replied airily, sauntering ahead to the bar.

Ritsuka remembered his hangover only yesterday morning. He also recalled meeting Prinz Eugen this morning with an entire bottle in her hand.

_This_, he realised, _would not end well._

*~B~*

**A single chapter my ass, this ended up freaking huge. It's a damn good thing I separated them.**

**I don't really know what to say about this, and perhaps I don't have to with a chapter this large.**

**The nickname Shiina comes from the Japanese of 4 and 7 (shi and nana). Da Vinci thought it was cuter so that's what stuck.**

**Celenike Icecolle went down like a chump.**

**Anyway, feel free to ask me questions in reviews. I'll try to answer them by next chapter.**

**And for reference:**

**Everyone here is in their base outfits, except for Saratoga, who's in her retrofit outfit.**

**I guess that's all for now.**

**I intended to wait until I finished the next chapter of my other fic (it's been 70% done for months) and post them all together, but meh, inspiration just wasn't striking**

**Punitor567 out. El Psy Congroo.**

**Bremerton character tag when.**


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